Stupendous 2015 Strawckets! - Part 2

I thought about not writing part 2 to this wonderful project, but there were too many awesome rockets from  2nd graders and 4th graders to ignore.

When I go into a classroom, I usually try to give students some context for the project  we're doing that day (what's the point if they don't understand the relevance?). For this project, I talked about the possibility of a manned mission to Mars and how we need a new rocket technology to get us there. Of course, we also need a very efficient rocket design that will make the most of the new technology. 

I also talk about what we take when we go on vacation, and what things we must take to Mars or elsewhere when it could potentially be a one-way trip after a problematic landing. Sometimes (I haven't done it recently), we have a discussion about the fact that it might cost more than $1,000,000 to take 1 pound something into space. All these problems point to coming up with a very efficient rocket design:

1. to make it safer for the astronauts
2. to arrive at the destination faster
3. to save money

 So, without farther ado, here are some great designs from today's classes.

2nd grade Distance Strawcket Winners

2nd grade Spiral Trick Strawcket Winners

Other Strawcket designs from a 2nd grade class

4th grade Distance Strawcket Winners

4th grade Spiral Trick Strawcket Winners

Please check out some other interesting designs from the 4th grade class.

Sure, a lot of these designs may have problems with aerodynamics, but I don't feel that it's my job to curtail their creativity in any way.

The words to remember for my science project classes are - curiosity, creativity, and determination.

I  hope you have fun with your strawckets.

Stupendous 2015 Strawckets! - Part 1

I usually do 10 projects in a school year (try to do a project a month for most classrooms, and do a few more for my child's classroom), and I try to mix it up so that kids and I don't get bored. BUT this is one project that I go back to every year because kids ABSOLUTELY love this project.

Before we start building our strawckets, I explain Newton's Second Law, which says  

Force = mass x acceleration (I use mass and weight interchangeably in the classrooms).

Over the years, I've learned one thing from the kids of all ages and grades - adults consistently underestimate their ability to create and problem-solve. So, I cover the Newton's Second Law in Kindergarten classes, too, but I use addition instead of multiplication, and use visual aids. What I want them to understand is the relationship between the three variables. 

If the force is constant (our lung power), then if mass goes up, then acceleration goes down. If the mass goes down, acceleration goes up.

Then I ask for volunteers and have the biggest, tallest child, the smallest, shortest child, the fastest runner, and the slowest runner come up for a demonstration. The biggest, tallest child might have stronger lung power than the smallest, shortest child. The fastest runner might have stronger lung power than the slowest runner. BUT, that's just a guess. It's not necessarily true. It all depends on how efficient the rocket design is in using the lung power. I try to have the kids think about all these factors before we build the strawckets.

Supplies List: 

• Boba straws (these are wider straws for pearl drinks served at restaurants, and Asian smoothie shops)
• 8 1/2 in x 2  3/4in strips of paper (fold a copy paper width-wise half, and then half again, giving you four pieces of  8 1/2 in x 2  3/4in strips)
• Index cards
• Scotch Tape

Building Instructions:

1. Wrap the paper around the straw and tape it down the seam. Make sure it doesn't stick to the straw, and that the straw can slide in and out easily.
2. On one end, create a cone, and put a piece of tape around it.
3. Now, put the partially built rocket on your straw and blow it. It won't fly very well.
4. Now, cut out fins from a piece of an index card and tape it on the rocket. Any place you choose.
5. Now, blow it and see how it flies. If it doesn't fly well, take it apart or build another one to make it fly better. Engineering is all about failure and overcoming that failure.

 When I do this project, I have two challenges:

1. Farthest distance
2. Trickiest rocket - boomerang and tight spiral (what I'm looking for is an indication that there was some thought behind the design)

Sometimes I change things around by asking the kids for accuracy, but they kids are pretty challenged year after year by just first two challenges.

Here are some pictures from recent classes:

From a 3rd grade class

1st 5th grade class - Distance Rocket Winners

1st 5th grade class - Spiral Trick Rocket Winners

1st 5th grade class - Boomerang Trick Rocket Winners 

2nd 5th grade class - Distance Rocket Winners

2nd 5th grade class - Trick Rocket Winners

I was stunned by the creativity of the students, but these two designs were AMAZING!

Even with the airfoil, I thought this would be too heavy with all the index card paper, but it flew beautifully.  Every time. Won the design award.

This design had a beautiful, really tight spiral, but after the tape came off, we couldn't duplicate the trick flight. But I did see it, and I couldn't deny her the design award.

Some other awesomely crazy designs are:

I tell the kids that I want them to push the envelope. Don't play safe. Think outside the box. Failure is good (one of the project's motto is Fail Spectacularly!), and I was extremely happy with this group of kids. I have more classes coming up this week, but I think it'll be hard to beat these designs. 

I might update if there's a mind-blowing one.

Enjoy and build with your kids.

NOTE: The project idea came from The Tech Museum's website a few years ago.

Awesome Books - The Naming Jar by Yangsook Choi

One of the teachers I work with at my daughter's elementary school introduced me to this book, and I absolutely loved it. Let me tell you why.
 

My family and I immigrated to the US when I was ten-years-old from South Korea. Though, at the time, I found consolation in my false impressions that my father spoke English, but I soon found out how little English he actually spoke at the time. Due to lack of English language skills, my brothers and I were teased quite often, but more than anything, our weird names painted big, fat target on our backs.

My Korean name is Ryoung Ah. This is enunciated with the silent R, usually, but the correct enunciation rolls the R in front of the y. But how could the kids in my 4th grade have known? They had to make do with a jumble of letters that you just don't see in American names very often. So, my name got butchered from Rye-young-gah to R-youn-gah, to any number of unwieldy sounds. But I didn't have the courage to correct any of them. One of my brother's name is Dong Hwan, but it got changed to Ding Dong. Dong Dong, etc. The other brother's name is Kyung Tai, but it got changed to Kee-young-tie, etc.

Needless to say, changing Korean names to American names sounded like a good idea, and we did. But even in this, my path to finding an American name of my own wasn't smooth. I liked Christine. Christine Kim had a nice ring to it. So, the next day, I went to school and told another Korean girl that beginning next Monday, I was going to everyone to call me Christine. Well, that "friend" had told everyone to call her Christine after the first recess, and I was left out in the cold. I had to start my search for an American name all over again. Finally, by the end of next week, I settled on Jennifer. I don't even remember if I particularly liked the name, but I chose it because I knew no one else named Jennifer.

With all these stories behind how I ended up with my name, I enjoyed this wonderful book and loved the choice she made. I think it was the right choice for her, but I also realize that I made the right choice for me.

I am Jennifer Ryoung Ah Kim.

P.S. I thought I should add this funny story. When we first got here, my brothers and I were desperate to make friends, and wondered why it was so hard to make friends.... Well, before we started school, my Korean-American uncle taught us a phrase that supposed to keep us out of trouble.

The phrase was... I can't speak English. Please, leave me alone.

What?!? I know.

Even now, I have a hard time believing that my uncle actually taught us the phrase thinking it would solve all kinds of problems. And here we were, wondering why we couldn't make any friends.

Awesome Books - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

This book surprised me in a couple of ways.

I'm pretty good at guessing the ending of the book. Maybe it's because I'm a writer, but I can consistently guess the ending. However, I had no idea how this book would end, and even a few tendrils of ideas I had, nothing worked out the way I thought it might.

The book rating on the back cover said Ages 10 and Up, but I'm not sure I agree with that. There is a certain viciousness in this book that startled and shocked me. I didn't expect it from such a young character. Although a lot of books have Ages so and up, usually the kids who are at least 2 or 3 years younger start to read up to the age rating. At that point, I feel that this book is not appropriate for kids who are younger than 10. AND I wouldn't let my daughter read it until she's about 11 or 12.

HOWEVER, I enjoyed this book, and I'd like to recommend it to anyone who likes a good action/adventure. That is anyone older than 10, but probably 12.

Spoiler Alert~

Ender lives in a dangerous world where the Aliens nicknamed "buggers" have invaded the earth twice already. Every Earthlings' life is predicated by the impending third bugger invasion.

In this world of limited resources and impending doom, Ender is also a dreaded "third." In a world where there is two-child-per-family policy, being a "third" itself is a reason for derision. He is picked on by his classmates, and he is harassed by his older brother who resents him for being more talented and capable of meeting the demands of military training.

But he is a cunning, ruthless, military genius, and he is sent to Battle School to hone his strategic and tactical skills pitted against other brilliant students of Battle School. There, he excels once again by coming up with mock battle plans that surprise and impress his superiors. His team never loses a battle, no matter how it is outnumbered and disadvantaged. His successes in Battle School convince his teachers to Command School, skipping several years of additional training.

In Command School, he is isolated from the rest and interacts mostly with his mentor, the previous conflict's war hero, Mazer. He spends most of his time fighting buggers in simulation, and he is depressed by the endless simulations and isolated existence.

For his "final" test, Ender's fleet is outnumbered by the buggers by a lot, and he sacrifices most of his fighters to launch a weapon that destroyed the entire bugger planet. Ender thinks this act of rebellion will get him kicked out of Command School. Instead, he learns that the "simulations" weren't simulations. In fact, they represented the actual international fleet, buggers' fleet, and buggers' home world. Ender has won the bugger war for the humanity.

Winning the bugger war has opened a bigger can of worms on Earth where various powers fight amongst themselves for the control. Due to his capabilities, he cannot return to Earth. He decides to become a colonist on one of the buggers' worlds. There he learns that bugger invasions were based on misunderstandings and mistakes, and he finds a dormant egg of the bugger queen. In the end, he and his sister board a starship to search for a safe world to establish another bugger colony.

I skipped a big chunk of plot that involves his brother and sister, but I wanted to concentrate on Ender. I really enjoyed the strategy and tactics Ender used to win his mock battles in Battle School and Command School; however, I had problems with what finally led to Ender's entry into Battle School and Command School. His brutal beating of a classmate bully lands him not in jail, but in coveted Battle School. And when he is ambushed, he responds with overwhelming force, and it gets him promoted to Command School. In both cases, his opponents are dead. It's this rewarding of his ruthlessness that I find objectionable.

However, I did enjoy the book. In fact, I'll probably read it again. It made me think about a lot of things, from space colonization to alien life forms to morality of preemptive strike, communication obstacles between two vastly different species, etc. Though I did have some reservations, I would recommend the book to those who enjoy action or sci-fi.  

PS - I also read Ender's Shadow, and the same brutality, cunning, and ruthlessness are threaded in this book for a main character who is even younger (starts out at 4), and I just couldn't recommend the book. And I didn't enjoy it. It was too much, but I finished, hoping that things would change. It didn't.

Terrific Toys - Monopoly Deal

I've decided to write a side column about toys (Terrific Toys) and books (Bodacious Books) that I love for my kids.

When my daughter was five years old, she was introduced to this game by her older cousins and loved it. Then she taught me to play, and as I got to understand the complexity of this card game, I was astounded by the strategy one needed to win. And she won a lot against older players.

So, over the years, I got in the habit of picking this up whenever I see them (my favorite place is Target because I could pick it up for $5.99 or so), and give them away to my friends who had children of similar age or older.

The rules are somewhat similar to the classic monopoly game in that players are asked to collect properties. The player who collects 3 suite of properties (3 of 4 properties in each suite) fastest wins. Simple enough, right? But no. It gets very complicated because you can steal properties, take property from another player in exchange of one of your unwanted properties, demand rent from one or all of the players, depending on what kind of rental card you hold, use "wild" property cards to augment your property holdings, etc. The possibilities are endless!

We have two packs of this game - one to leave at home and one to keep it in the car (but we keep forgetting to do that).

I guess I love this game because it's shown me what a strategic thinker my daughter is. At age five, she'd set me up, give up some excellent cards to me, only to take them away from me just when I thought I had won the game. 

I'm not sure everyone would agree, but I think it's great for teaching children strategy. And I love this game especially because the game could finish very quickly (we've finished a game in five minutes because we've  tweaked the game and created our own family's rules). So, if you have little time, but your children are asking you to play with them, this is a great one to play.

Enjoy!

Absolutely Amazing!

I started volunteering in classrooms in 2007, and since then, I've conducted over 350 - 400 science projects in classrooms. I usually have projects I do each month, and I follow that because it gets too confusing to schedule different projects in 9 - 12 classrooms a month. Well, this month, it was our last project of the year in one of my second grade classes, and the teacher and I couldn't really think of a special project (after all these years, I struggle to make these projects fresh and interesting to children who were already exposed to them in the previous year and to myself as well). So, I just gathered up the supplies I had left over, and headed for the classroom. This was going to be a very open-ended project (the kind I like best).

This is what I gave to a class of 2nd graders (four groups of six students but smaller the better).

Supplies List:
25 straws (Dollar Store variety)
6 bamboo chopsticks (3 pairs)
scotch tape

I told the students to make a tower of some kind that would hold up at least one of their hard cover, heavy textbooks. I had 1 1/2 hours, and I gave them first hour to come up with a design and build their first version. After the first hour, this group built a structure that held almost 2 textbooks when all the other groups failed.

After the first design and build attempt, I gave additional five straws and another pair of chopsticks to all the groups with some ideas to make their structures stronger.

Well, this is the result and it blew me away. I thought maybe, just maybe a 2nd grader group could build something that would support 3 - 4 textbooks, but a group of them built something that held up 9 textbooks. That's probably between 20 - 25 pounds or more (I tend to underestimate weight consistently). What an awesome achievement! Another lesson in underestimating our children.

I actually think this structure could have held at least one more book, but we didn't have it handy. A little boy ran to the shelf to get another book when it collapsed. Amazing!

Without the books on top.

This turned out to be one of the best projects! I'm definitely going to use this project next year.

Try it at home and have fun.

Whirly Birds - study in hydrodynamics and biomimetics

I know. It's a mouthful, isn't it? But it's a really fun project for kids of all ages. I did this experiment in 5th grade class yesterday, and it went well. But, it took much longer than I expected. I started with 6 designs, but I will cut that down to 3 designs in next week's experiment with a 1st grade class. I didn't realize how long it would take to cut these out.

An important disclaimer first. I got this project ideal from science buddies. Please check out www.sciencebuddies.com. It's a great place to go for project ideas.

Before I started the project, I discussed the concept of biomimetics or biomimicry. Simply, it means that engineers are trying to use what we find in nature to improve functions of man-made objects. A great example is velcro. It was invented by a man who went for a walk with his dog and came home with a lot of hooked burs from the local hills on his socks and his dog. He studied the burs and invented velcro. Imagine that!

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Aero_p015.shtml#procedure

This is the procedure for the experiment on science buddies. You can follow this or follow my instructions listed below.

Whether following the science buddies instruction or mine, it's good to read the background info.

Biomimetics - Studying and Learning from Nature

I start this class by talking about bumps on humpback whales' fins, shark's spiky skin, and tiny fins on mackerels. All this info is on the background info. I continue the discussion by asking the class if any of them were lazy or their parents call them lazy. Then I tell them that nature is also lazy. It doesn't want to do any more than it has to (in most cases). So, if they see something that doesn't make sense, they should investigate it because there's a reason for that feature.

Supplies:

1.      Paper, to copy the whirly bird designs on them. I've used two different kinds of paper in class (plain copy paper and construction paper), but I've also used card stock paper at home with my children to see the difference. It really doesn't matter for the lesson.

2.      Craft scissors for make patterns. It would be nice to have scalloped and saw-tooth designs, but this is not a must have. Any sharp vs. curvy pattern would do.

3.      Pencil and notebook paper to take down data.

Instructions:

1.      Ask which features were represented by which scissor designs. Sharp - shark skin/mackerel finlets. Curvy - tubercles on whale fins.

2.      Ask which edge would be most efficient. It's supposed to be curvy, but it wasn't a clear cut winner in our experiment.

3.      Follow science buddies instructions on cutting and making whirly birds. Here are some pictures.

4.      With a classroom of 33 kids, even dropping 6 design 5 times each was hard to complete in 90 minute class. So, I'd stick with the 3 designs. Now, if you're doing this at home, I'd say try all kinds of paper and craft scissor designs.

5.      After the experiment, ask if they could think of five different uses for their biomimetic findings. My classroom of kids came up with a thin skin to cover over boats, torpedoes, etc. to make them slice through the water more efficiently, to name a few.

6.      The key concept to talk about is that nature is lazy. There is a reason for most of the natural features on animals, plants, insects, and the students should investigate them.

Have fun!