Lightbulb Lab, Force and Motion

I do a once a month science program for grades 3 and up, this month the theme was force and motion. I like to choose at least 4 experiments or activities based around a central theme. I wanted to really focus on Newton's laws, so I rounded up a few fun activities to explain the theories.

The cost of this program: FREE!

Materials: ten pennies, plastic cup, cardboard, tape, pencil, plastic knife, iPad (optional, to watch Steve Spangler videos), piece of fabric, plastic dinnerware.

Activity 1 was a coin trick. You place a piece of cardboard over the top of a cup (we used plastic for safety reasons) and place a penny on the cardboard. When you flick the cardboard the penny drops into the cup.

For activity 2 was a more complicated coin trick. We turned our flat piece of cardboard into a hoop and placed the penny on top of the hoop, and balanced that on top of the same glass. Using a pencil, we quickly hit the hoop to force it into motion and watched as the penny, again, went directly into the cup. We discussed the reasons behind this and the kids gave their best scientific theories.

Then we discussed what Newton's laws mean-that an object in motion (the cardboard) wants to stay in motion, but an object at rest (the penny) wants to stay at rest, and is affected by the forces of gravity pulling it toward the cup.

We watched a video for activity 3. I was too nervous to do this demonstration on our carpeted library floor, so we watched this video from Steve Spangler Science. (I really wanted to do this demonstration for all of our school tours for "Fizz, Boom, Read," but the director wasn't so thrilled with the idea.)

For activity 4 we made a coin tower. We stacked ten pennies on a tabletop and used a plastic butter knife to hit out the bottom coin. I challenged the kids to see who could swipe out the most coins, one by one, from the bottom of the stack before it fell over.

Activity 5 was by far the most entertaining demonstration we did. Everyone has seen the tablecloth trick, where you pull the tablecloth out from under the plates of food. I used some of the plastic dishes and cutlery from our early learning kitchen, but if you really trust your kids you could use real china. I taught them the correct way to pull out a tablecloth and gave them each 2 tries.