Forces Problem Solving

Primary Three had their thinking caps on yesterday to try and solve some space age problems!  We had been learning about what it takes to launch a spacecraft up into space and discovered the new term FORCE!  After looking at this in more detail we understood that force is what causes movement such as pulling and pushing.  To test their new knowledge P3 were given a task!

Challenge One: Without touching your spacecraft with your hands or feet, find a way to move it along the floor for a distance of two metres.

Challenge Two: Without touching your spacecraft with your hands or feet, find a way to launch your spacecraft up into the air.

The children worked in pairs and had a fantastic time trialling their theories on what force they could use to actually move their spacecraft without touching it.

As you can see from the photos the children were very focused on their task and came up with some EXCELLENT ideas including:

attaching a string and pulling their spacecraft!

pushing their spacecraft off using 30cm rulers!

launching their spacecraft by using a see-saw function with the metre rulers!

launching their spacecraft by blasting it off one end of a skateboard after applying force at one end!

At the end we trialled everyone's ideas, understood what did and didn't work and really reinforced our learning about FORCE. 

We now have a class of little space engineers of the future!