This week we continued our experimentations with electrical circuits. We used an electronics kit called Brainbox to build different projects.
Cary – The brainbox stuff was so great, it couldn’t be better. There was a spinny thing that went in the air like a helicopter and I put all three batteries together and it went really high. I tried to make a circuit that made two spinners fly up in the air but there just wasn’t enough power in the batteries to launch two spinners at once. Three batteries still wasn’t enough so I took a spinny thing away. Then it went really high and I was really happy.
Nathan – I liked doing the motor launch spinning wheel. For that you needed to make a circuit with batteries, connectors, a motor and a launch disc.
Callum – It was very amazing. I was trying to get the two aeroplanes to work. When I tried only one it worked but two wouldn’t work at the same time.
We learned more about switches this week. We tried out three different kinds, the press switch, the slide switch and the dry reed switch.
Nathan – If you want a switch I would recommend the push switch. If it makes contact with the metal then it works.
Callum – The slide switch is an on and off switch just like the one on your wall for your light. I used a push switch and a slide switch. They both had to be on at the same time to complete the circuit.
Cary – I really like the reed switch. When the magnet comes close to the metal parts the two metal parts come together and form a power line! If I had 100 batteries and had that magnet switch just think how high the spinner would go!
Cary had seen on TV that you could make a battery from a potato so we decided to find out if this was true. We looked on the internet and found out that citrus fruit are supposed to be even better at producing electricity, so we got some lemons.
Callum – It was very exciting to see the lemons. We used four. We put a zinc nail and a copper coin into each lemon. These made good conductors. We linked copper and not copper with wires. The lemons made enough energy to get the light bulb to work. It was exciting!
This week we played a new game at Maths Mission time. It was called Kim’s game. Everyone had to look for a whole minute at some objects on a tray and try to remember them. Then one thing was taken away while our eyes were closed!
Callum – Kim’s game was a hiding game.
Geordie – You have to identify what is missing. I noticed a duck was missing. Then we played Kim’s game with numbers. We used the answers from the 3 and 5 times tables. I discovered that 24 was missing. I hope we can play it again next week!
