Today is Monday 14th May 2018 and super school was a welcome distraction from the super heatwave we are unusually experiencing in these parts, it's very welcome heat though a little uncomfortable for those of us in the north to be outside for any great length of time
We began our study of the wonderful world of physics, neither child has encountered any specific teaching of physics so I figured that's brilliant we can begin anywhere, we chose to watch a tedtalk The Fascinating Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski (1)
A rather good tedtalk and was given by a clear speaking and enthusiastic presenter, it was very interesting and both responded really well asking questions and even tackling the breaking down and understanding of the complex title of the experiment
We chose the egg experiment as our first physics experiment and it was easy to accomplish using items readily available in the house, both got involved in the experiment and through this and the discussion in which I asked them to visualise a water balloon filled with water to help understand the concept of momentum lead to the lightbulb moment when I could see both of them clicked into understanding
As usual with my son his autism had to put some kind of spin on it and he now asks if the cats have momentum, constantly, he loves the cats and will find a way to relate whatever we are learning to them somehow, he then ate the boiled egg, I love it
Our first physics experiment
My daughter took an egg and placed it to boil in a pan with some water, my son grabbed a raw egg, when the egg was boiled both that one and the raw one were placed on a flat surface and we all took a turn at spinning both eggs then stopping them with a fingertip to see the effect the halting of the spin had on each egg, we also felt each egg and discussed the different feel of the weight of each and we discussed the title of the experiment which was,
The Conservation of Angular Momentum
First we broke down the title into it's seperate components, we discussed the meaning of the word conservation and looked at examples of conservation projects in nature then we discussed it's context within this experiment, as in we were observing the raw egg maintaining it's current state of motion for a few seconds after stopping and the boiled stopping dead, we then discussed what the concept of angles, both children giving good examples of angles, my son only knew of what an angle was in that he showed me two lines coming together and the space where they join being measured as an angle, and my daughter was brilliant and taught us about acute angles being less than 90 obtuse angles being more than 90 and less than 180 and a right angle being 90 and a reflex angle being more than 180 so I was very pleased than my daughter took over teaching role and she loved it and was very good at it
My daughter has already finished her homework and handed it in my son has shown me everything he did so far but asked to hand it in tomorrow as he had more he wanted to add which I thought was brilliant and readily agreed
Future studies will include artwork based on angles, experiments using raisins and lemonade, I am also going to find the Solway 1927 conference along with famous photograph and introduce each of the scientists present to the children, probably devoting an entire afternoon session to each one, I will first introduce them to Tesla and his very important work, and a field trip yet to be decided, we have organised next weeks field trip as it was requested by both to go to the nearby big town and visit the museum there which is good we have visited many times and know it well, tomorrow we have our maths field trip we are all looking forward to it
Along with early morning gardening, sorting out homebased chores, and a lovely sunny day we have enjoyed our day and we hope you have enjoyed yours
(1) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug
