Tag: physics

Creative Thinking, Problem Solving, Science

Which Door Will the Ball Hit?

Terri Eichholz

The Kid Should See This tweeted the link to this great video, “Which Door Will the Ball Hit?” so I think it’s only fair to send you to their link to read more about it.  I adore this idea from Joseph Herscher of using Rube Goldberg-type machines to make video puzzles, and I think it would be an excellent “hook” to show students before asking them to design their own.  To get some practice before they design their first prototypes, they could play the Bubble Ball app, Goldburger to Go, or this game on Engineering.com.

You can also view more of my Rube Goldberg posts here.  And, if your students enjoy puzzle videos, the TED Ed riddle videos are great.  (My students were big fans of the River Crossing Riddle.)

Dominoes
Image by SparrowsHome from Pixabay
Education, Fun Friday, Games, K-12, Parenting, Science, Videos

Domino Chain Reaction

Terri Eichholz

For today’s Fun Friday post, I am sharing a video I originally found on The Kid Should See This.
I must admit that I’ve always found it fascinating to watch domino chain reactions, but never really thought about the physics involved.

While I was grabbing the embed code for this video, I noticed quite a few other video suggestions on the side. As always, I would caution adults to preview any videos before showing them to the class. Another video that employs the use of a domino chain reaction that has been making the internet rounds recently is “Dog Goldberg Machine.” It’s an advertisement for Beneful, but quite clever (and cute!)

Got any dominoes around the house? Playing the game or making the chain reaction are both great activities for a rainy – or super hot – day!

Apps, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Education, Games, K-12, Problem Solving, Science

Bubble Ball (Reblog)

Terri Eichholz

For the summer, I have decided to use my Tuesday and Thursday posts to reblog some of my favorite posts that some of my readers may have missed the first time around.

Bubble Ball is one of my favorite iDevice apps.  It is a free download, and has 48 levels.  You can purchase more after you finish the 48  for  99 cents.  The purpose of this game is to use the various materials that appear on the screen in each level to direct a ball to roll toward a flag.  I don’t usually like to recommend game apps for the classroom, because students seem to get enough of those at home.  But this Physics challenge encourages problem solving and creative thinking.  Many of the levels have more than one solution.  This could be a fun center in which the students could take screen shots of their solutions and explain them using the free Screen Chomp app or other methods.  It would be interesting to compare the different solutions groups develop, and have them explain their thought processes.  Of course, I highly recommend that you play around with the app yourself – just to get familiar with the levels, of course 😉

Apps, K-12, Language Arts, Science, Student Products, Writing

Bubble Ball

Terri Eichholz

Bubble Ball is one of my favorite iDevice apps.  It is a free download, and has 48 levels.  You can purchase more after you finish the 48  for  99 cents.  The purpose of this game is to use the various materials that appear on the screen in each level to direct a ball to roll toward a flag.  I don’t usually like to recommend game apps for the classroom, because students seem to get enough of those at home.  But this Physics challenge encourages problem solving and creative thinking.  Many of the levels have more than one solution.  This could be a fun center in which the students could take screen shots of their solutions and explain them using the free Screen Chomp app or other methods.  It would be interesting to compare the different solutions groups develop, and have them explain their thought processes.  Of course, I highly recommend that you play around with the app yourself – just to get familiar with the levels, of course 😉