Year 5 - Scientific Spinners

Date: 8th Mar 2023 @ 5:17pm

This half-term, Year 5 have been studying forces. We have learned about gravity and friction and how they affect the world around us. This week the children were asked to investigate air resistance. They worked together to plan an investigation into the affect of air resistance on falling objects. Pupils decided to create 'helicopters' and see how they fell to the ground. Following a class discussion, we suggested a number of variables which would affect the rate of descent, and decided to investigate the size of the spinner - all of the other variables were kept the same. Following the investigation pupils identified that the larger the spinner, the slower the rate of descent. We concluded that this was because a larger surface area created more air resistance.