Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Motors


today we had a lab about electricity. There were three experiments, but we only got to one and a half so I won't talk about the last one. In the first experiment we wrappesd copper wire around a straw and attached both ends of the wire to a battery. The we put a needle into one end of the straw and because the wire had been magnetized by the energy moving through it, the needle moved to the middle of the straw on its own. Then we made a contraption with wire that looks like that. We had to make a coil of wire with the ends poking out of it. Then we set up the battery-rubber band-paperclip-magnet thing and we put the wire on top of the paper clips and spun it. The point of the experiment was to make an instrument that would keep the wire spinning forever. However, ours was not working properly, so it would just spin once or twice then stop.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Monday, October 22, 2007

Remote Repairs Lab

Today we did a lab where we were supposed to tell each other how to build a contraption made of Legos. The hard part is, we had to do it by telling each other how on a telephone. We couldn't see what we were supposed to build, so it was difficult to tell each other how to build it quickly, because we only had an hour to describe three Lego things, and build them. We didn't manage to get through all of the descriptions, but we got through two and they were very much like the things that they were supposed to be. I think that if we had had a little more time, we would have been able to get them all done.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Launching From The Moon Lab

Today we did a lab where we had to get a balloon, and a straw up a length of fishing line. It was really hard, because in addition to the balloon we had to get a lot of different stuff, including a foam ball, paper towel tube and 2 wheels up the line, but not all at once. It was really difficult because the balloons didn't always push the stuff up the string, sometimes it just spun it around and around. I think that this was because we didn't hold the string tight enough.