6th Grade Invention Convention

We started our Inane Innocuous Invention Convention Project for 2012. Today we began building our inventions which are our own Rube Goldberg creations. Our invention must accomplish a simple everyday task and can not use batteries. We introduced Newton's First Law with a couple of demos:
Place a vase, metal pie pan, cardboard tube and egg in a tower. Quickly knock the pie pan horizontally and this should cause the egg to fall in to the vase. Egg Drop Experiment.

Sometimes the cardboard tube lands in the vase, too.

The second demo uses Inertia Rings balanced on top of a plastic soda bottle and then a small hex nut balanced on top of the ring.
We all tried grabbing the ring and allowing the hex nut to fall into the bottle.

These two activities show Newton's First Law. He said that since the egg is not moving while it sits on top of the tube it stays in place - ah, no force is acting upon it.  We applied enough force to the pie pan to cause it to zip out from under the cardboard tube. We knocked the support out from under the egg. The egg didn’t move because it was already stationary (not moving). Then, the force of gravity took over and pulled the egg straight down toward the center of the Earth.

6th Grade Wetland Summary: Tom and Ben

We finished up our Glogs on Glogster which were our way of putting together some of the things we have learned through our study of the wetlands.We also made a quick summary sentence of something we learned and recorded it on the Tom and Ben News Program.

Artist Boat Pictures: Easy Direct Link!

Artist Boat Pictures Albrecht
Artist Boat Pictures Sherrard

Hello 6th Grade CSI! I found a way to put the pictures directly on the blog so that you do not have to download dropbox for your computer or netbook.

Hope it works!

Friday, April 29

Today the 6th Grade Scientists participated in an activity sponsored by Stephen F. Austin State Historic Site. Amanda McVay presented a lesson concerning the value of artifacts and told us about the many artifacts found in Stephen F. Austin's first settlement.
The artifacts found in the park area teach us about the type of activities of the people who lived there.
The original town of San Felipe was burned during the Texas Revolution.
The students grouped their artifacts and then discussed and determined conclusions about the lives of the people who once lived in historic San Felipe.