From the Earth to the Moon

This week we got the following challenge: Apply Newton's 3rd Law: For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, to design a rocket that can travel from the earth to the moon, or at the very least, design a straw, souped up with just a balloon and tape,  that will fly along a string, tied between two chairs sporting pictures of the earth and the moon. We worked in teams designing, building, and rebuilding our rockets. We learned a lot through trial and error and were even inspired to brainstorm how to design a balloon rocket that would travel to the moon and back in one uninterrupted trip. 

What would you do?

Here in Israel, we've got some real heroes to inspire us. Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari, and Yonatan Winetraub are leading Israel's SpaceIL's team in Google's global competition to successfully launch, fly, and land a robotic spacecraft on the moon.

For some more background on their work, you can watch this BrainPOP video.

"We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"(John F. Kennedy, 1961)

Physics: Crash!

This week we continued our studies of motion through 2 mini-experiments.  The first one was an investigation of how increasing the slope of a ramp affects a car's speed. We used the same set-up from last week, (toy cars, tracks, and encyclopedias), but for the grand finale we threw in some action figures, blocks at the bottom of the ramp to simulate a CRASH, and some optional string for seat belts.  The kids observed the motion of passengers, with and without seat belts, as the cars crashed into barriers,

In the second experiment the kids were challenged to build an air-powered car using a toy car, a straw, a balloon, and some tape.  Both experiments demonstrated Newton's Laws of Motion.  More on than next week.