Twirlers

Today your child came home with a new spinning item from our science work -- a twirler!  A twirler is different from our other spinners - it doesn't require the axis to be balanced in one place.  Our tops had to stay balanced on a flat surface.  Our zoomers had to be balanced on strings pulled tight by our thumbs.  Our twirlers, however, flew up into the air!

Today we experimented with different ways to give the twirler the force required to move.  We pulled and pushed, we gave a lot of force and a little, we change the direction of the force -- and so much more!  We quickly learned that the more force we gave the twirler, the further it went.  We also noticed that a pulling force ended in a collision between the twirler and our faces, while a pushing force really got it going.  On Thursday we'll start writing our thoughts about spinning -- since next week we'll start studying the motion of rolling!

Above is a twirler twirling through the air in our school yard