Hoover Challenge

Materials:
Film canister
Container of water
Various Materials

Challenge:
With your group, try to get the film canister to hover in
the water. To hover means that the film canister will be
floating below the surface of the water and above the
bottom of the container. No part of the film canister can be out of the water or
touching the bottom of the container. You may use any of the materials on the
table, but everything you use must go inside the film canister.

Whats Happening?

You have just created a miniature version of a submarine. Submarines are unique
ships, because they can float, but also submerge underwater.

Force is a push or pull on an object. There are two forces that act on a submarine:
buoyancy (pushing up) and gravity (pushing down). To overcome these forces a
submarine relies on density. Density is defined as weight per volume (expressed
by the formula Density=Mass/Volume ) submarines are able to achieve sinking and
hovering by filling large tanks, called ballast tanks with different amounts of water.
As the tank fills with water, the submarines density increases, which causes the
submarine to sink. In a submarine, the volume stays constant because the size of
the submarine never changes. But, the density changes by adding or taking away
water. In your film canister submarine, you added items to the inside to make it
submerge. By doing this you increased the density because the volume remained
consistent *the size of the film canister never changed), but the mass was
increased.

Sound Sandwich
Materials:
2 jumbo craft sticks
1 straw
1 wind rubber band (#64)
2 smaller rubber bands (#32)

What to do:
1. Place a wide rubber band lengthwise over one craft stick
2. Cut 2 small pieces of straw, each about 1 inch to 1 inches in length.
3. Tuck 2 straw pieces underneath the rubber band, slide one straw towards
each end of the craft stick *about 1 inch from the end)
4. Place another craft stick on top of the straws, like the top piece of bread on a
sandwich
5. Wrap a smaller rubber band around both of the craft sticks on one end of the
sandwich, to hold them in place. Use another rubber band to do the same on
the other end. The rubber bands should pinch the 2 craft sticks together but
there should be a small space between the two craft sticks created by the
two pieces of the straw.
6. Hold the sound sandwich up to your mouth and blow through the space
between the sticks. What happened? What did it feel like?
7. Try moving the straws closer together and blow through the middle of the
sandwich again. Did moving the straws change anything?

Whats Happening?

When you blow through the sound sandwich, could you feel it vibrating against
your lips? Sound is produced when a vibration is transmitted through a gas.
When you blew air through the space between the craft sticks, it caused the
rubber band to vibrate (move up and down quickly) between the two craft sticks.
That vibration produces a sound.

Sound moves just like the rubber band, up and down in a wave. Sound waves
can have different lengths, and different wavelengths result in different sounds.
When the straws were placed closer together, the part of the rubber band that
vibrates is shortened and moves more quickly, resulting in a higher pitched
sound.

Shake It What do you Hear?

Materials:
Film canisters filled with unknown materials
labeled with numbers or letters.
Tray of the materials for visual observation.
Prediction and matching worksheet.

What to do:

Shake each of the containers with numbers and

listen carefully.
Try to identify which object from the try fills each of these jars.
Record your prediction on the worksheet.
Then shake the containers with letters and try to match each
with the numbered containers.

Then check your answers by flipping over the answer sheet to

see how well you can identify sounds!

Shake It What do you Hear?

Guess the object and Match the Canisters

Film Canister Letter Predicted Filler

1
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10

Whats so Attractive???... MAGNETS

Materials:
Magnet wands
Various jars of magnetic and nonmagnetic
materials
Sorting trays
What to do:
Make a prediction bout which jars are magnetic and which jars are not.
Gently place magnetic wand against the jar, keeping the jar closed at all
times, to determine which jar is filled with magnetic materials and which
one is not.
Put the gars of magnetic and non magnetic materials onto two separate
sorting trays.

Whats happening?

One property of magnets is that they attract some objects, just like one
property of water is that it is wet. Magnets have magnetic force, the
property of attracting some objects or pushing objects away. The force
called magnetism happens when the atoms in the magnet line up.
Although, we cannot see the atoms line up, we can experience what
happens to an object when it is near a magnet.

Whats so Attractive???...
MAGNETS
Predicted Tested
Object magnetism (Yes or magnetism
No) (Yes or No)
 Owl Pellets
Owl pellets are masses of bone, teeth, hair, feathers and exoskeletons of various
animals preyed upon by raptors, or birds of prey. Pellets are produced and
regurgitated not only by owls, but by hawks, eagles and other raptors that swallow
their prey whole of in small pieces. Owls feed early in the evening and regurgitate a
single pellet approximately 20 hours after eating. Unlike snakes, the protein
enzymes and strong acids which occur in the digestive tract of raptors do not digest
the entire meal. The relatively weak stomach muscles of the bird form the
undigested fur, bones, feather etc. into wet slimy pellets. In this process even the
most fragile bones are usually preserved unbroken. The owl pellets that you will be
examining in this lab have been collected and sterilized from common barn owls.
Materials
Owl Pellet
Tweezers
Tooth Pick
Paper plate
Bone identification chart
Gloves (optional)

Procedures
1. Unwrap your owl pellet.
2. Make observations about the surface of your owl pellet
3. Carefully tease apart your owl pellet, being careful not to break
or lose any small bones.
4. Choose a bone and use the attached identification sheets to
reconstruct the skeleton of the prey.
5. After obtaining all of your data, dispose of the fur and feathers from your pellet and
place any bones in a labeled petri dish.
6. Record the species found in your owl pellet on the board.

Engineering with Wind

What is wind and wind energy?

Wind is simply air in motion. It is caused by the uneven

heating of the Earth's surface by the sun. Because the
Earth's surface is made of very different types of land and
water, it absorbs the sun's heat at different rates. One
example of this uneven heating can be found in the daily
wind cycle.

Today, wind energy is mainly used to generate electricity.

Wind is a renewable energy source because the wind will
blow as long as the sun shines.

Procedure

1. Use the materials provided to designs blades for our wind turbine. Consider
the weight, smoothness of surface, and number of blades needed. Attach the
blades to the dowels using tape.
 2. Once your blades are complete insert the wooden dowels into the holes of a
hub.
3. We will use a fan to create wind to spin. The multimeter will be used to
measure how much energy is generated.
4. Make a change to your blades and measure if it increases or decreases the
amount of energy generated.
5. Record your top energy production in the big data table in the front of the
classroom.

How does it work?

As the kinetic mechanical energy of the moving wind moves and rotates the blades
of the wind turbine, a generator inside the turbine is also rotated. This causes a
coiled wire to rotate around a magnet and creates an electrical current which we
measure with a multimeter. Since energy is neither created nor destroyed, the
greater the energy input, the greater the energy output will be. Therefore, the more
mechanical energy you start with -- the faster the blades turn -- the more electrical
energy will be created by the turbine.

Engineering with Wind

Design the Blades and Test their

Energy Producing Abilities!