![]() ![]() Students can change the eagle’s center of gravity by adding small pieces of tape or paper clips to have it balance perfectly. Its center of mass (or center of gravity) is generally beneath the tip of its beak. This eagle balances on almost anything – your finger, a pencil, or the edge of your desk. If you would prefer not to have your students make these designs, or if you’d like a more durable example of center of gravity for your science table, Educational Innovations carries a number of engaging products that students find fascinating! This led to plenty of discussion on center of gravity and why tightrope walkers use poles to balance themselves as they walk.Īs an extension, we also made balancing birds.īalancing bird template ( click on image for printable PDF template) ![]() Once they mastered having their “walkers” balance upright, I challenged them to balance their Popsicle stick so it was horizontal. Student were able to experiment with how wide apart they needed to place the arms in order for their little men to balance. Colored markers and googly eyes are optional, but add a lot of cute balancers! These balancing people were simple to make even for younger learners. You can make your own tightrope-walking men or ladies from Popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and a pair of washers. ![]() One of the activities I did with my students was a science/art project in which we made Balancing Men. The result was always greater interest by my students and therefore greater understanding of the concepts presented. Next, I asked the Physical Education teacher to pull out the low balance beam and have the kids explore walking on it with their arms at their sides versus holding their arms outstretched, with and without weights. While teaching Mirette on the High Wire, I would demonstrate the Popsicle stick and string. This is because there is more mass above your waist than below it. If you look at the human body, the center of gravity is actually found a little above the waist. In this case, the students can easily see that the center of gravity moves toward the added weight.įor more complex shapes, the center of gravity is not as easy to find. The result is that in order to balance, the stick will be longer on one side of the string than the other. In order to rebalance your stick, you will need to slide your string closer to the weight. If you tie the string too far on one side or another, the stick will not balance.īut what happens if you add a pea-sized lump of clay to the same Popsicle stick that just balanced perfectly when the string was tied directly in the center? Like a seesaw, the stick tips in the direction of the added weight. For a simple object like a Popsicle stick, the center of gravity is located right in the middle of the stick. For example, if you take a Popsicle stick and tie a string around it, the stick will balance when the string is located at its center of gravity. This point of concentration is where an object balances. Center of gravity is simply defined as the point where the mass (the stuff things are made from) of an object is concentrated. Gravity is the force that pulls all objects on Earth downward. And in Science, we learned about balance and center of gravity.Įven young children know that if you hold something above the ground and release it, the object falls. So as we read this book about a young French girl who learns from a retired high-wire artist to walk on a tightrope, in Language Arts we talked and wrote about our heroes, in Geography we researched where in the world France is. I tried as often as possible to tie things together. I was that teacher who always taught thematically-that is, nothing ever was taught in a vacuum. ![]() When I taught second grade, one of our literature books was Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully. ![]()
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