The girl's class went on a field trip to a local museum. The museum held a class on the physics of roller coasters. The kids had so much fun! After a Q and A session of physics, where the kids knew more than the parents, they started their experiments. For their first assignment the kids broke into teams and had 12 minutes to make a roller coaster where a metal ball (which stood in for a coaster) would land in a cup 13 inches away from the base of the coaster. They were give tinker toys, duct tape, a metal ball, a cup and flexible Styrofoam tubing. They were allowed to go anywhere and use anything in the class room. After the time was up, each group had one minute to test their roller coaster and tell one problem they had to over come.
Us parents and the teacher were amazed at how they figured everything out. Most of the time the problem was the ball would bounce out of the plastic cup. They all solved the problem in creative ways.
For their second assignment, they had 10 minutes to design a coaster with a loop in it where the ball landed in the cup. There was no limitations on how far the cup had to be from the base of the coaster.
The girl's group was the only one to successfully have the ball land in the cup on both experiments. I was especially proud, as her group was the only one with 4 girls and one boy. The boy was great and went along with the girls ideas without any fuss.
The girl can't wait to go to engineering camp this summer.
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