Today one of my students surprised me with a true inquiry experiments. We have been working on testing out the force of magnetism as it relates to distances. We have completed one of my favorite lessons called Breaking the Force. In this lesson we have used spacers between two magnets on a balance scale to measure how many washers will break the force.
So today, Jordan was done with his math and had about 5 minutes of free time. I walked over and saw he had taken a ruler (centimeter side) and taped it onto the table. He had a paper clip on the desk and was holding the magnet along the ruler. I walked over to see what he was doing and he said, "I wanted to measure to see how far a magnet should be from the paper clip to attract. Huh...it has to be at 1 cm distance to work." I asked him what he wanted to do next and he said, now I want to put two magnets together and see how far away I can hold it."
Wow...you gotta love it when they spend free time exploring science skills....
No comments:
Post a Comment