Pop Fly!

What is an unbalanced force? What is a balanced force? These questions were answered by our 3rd graders recently in our Science STEMscopes unit of Objects and Motion.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with STEM...
STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Sometimes an art project is done as well. Then it becomes STEAM.

The first part consisted of Objects and Motion stations. The students explored different ways that forces were applied. We sent cars, balls, and marbles down ramps of different lengths and heights to determine what would affect the forces. We looked at pendulums with different lengths of string. The students had a great understanding of what forces could do.

​Our wrap up project was creating a Pop Fly machine. We received a letter from the local little league asking for some help. Their players have been having difficulties catching pop flies, so they wanted us to create a machine that would send a ball high up in the sky. We created prototypes using simple materials such as spoons, cardboard, rubber bands, paint stirrers, and pencils. Our goal for the prototype was to send a marshmallow one meter high and one meter long. The students were very successful and learned a lot about balanced and unbalanced forces.

Designing our posters