The Whirligig Challenge Definition of WHIRLIGIG 1. a child's toy having a whirling motionwhirling 2. MERRY - GO - ROUND MERRY - GO - ROUND 3. a. one that continuously whirls, moves, or changes b. a whirling or circling course (as of events)whirls

Whirligig in nature

The Whirligig Challenge Cereal companies like to attract attention to their products. One company prints a paper helicopter on the back of its cereal box for children to play with. They call their simple paper helicopter a whirligig. The whirligig is cut out from the box. Parts are folded and paper clips are attached. When a child drops the whirligig, it spins as it falls.

The cereal company wants to create a new whirligig that will fall more slowly than the one they have been using. They think that would be more fun. Your challenge is to determine how to make a whirligig that will fall more slowly than the current one. The company gives you the criteria and constraints.

Criteria (Conditions that must be met) - The whirligig should fall more slowly than the one now on the cereal box Constraints (limitations in how the criteria can be met) – The whirligig template has to fit on the back of the box of cereal - The only material available are the cereal box and paper clips.

Beginning You will begin by identifying what you think you know about how things fall. You will observe 3 demonstrations to help you figure out what you know and what you need to learn. For each demonstration, record your predictions and observations on your Demonstrations Notes page.

Demonstration Notes DemonstrationPredictObserveCompare #1 Describe the event here One book and one piece of paper dropped from the same height #2 Describe the event here One coffee filter and a stack of 7 coffee filters dropped from the same height #3 Describe the event here One coffee filter and a flower of seven coffee filters dropped from the same height

After the demonstrations… Your class will share their predictions and observations. You will record the things you think you know and need to learn on a Project Board.

During the demonstrations… You will need to do three things. 1. Predict: you will predict what you think will happen after your teacher tells you what she’s going to do. Write your predictions down. 2. Observe: You will observe the demonstration and record them. 3. Compare: After the demonstration, you will compare your predictions to what you observed. Note what you predicted well and what surprised you.

Conference Share your predictions and observations with your group members. Make sure everybody has a chance to share. As a group, see if you understand why the dropped objects behaved the way they did. Discuss what you think you know and what you thought you knew. Discuss what you think you still need to learn to fully understand your observations. Jot down notes so that you will remember what you discussed when you share again with the class. You have 5 minutes.

Project Board – a space for the class to keep track of progress while working on a project During classroom discussions we will record the class’s ideas on a class Project Board. At the same time, you will keep track of what’s been discussed on your own Project Board page.

The Project Board has space for answering five guiding questions. 1.What do we think we know? 2.What do we need to investigate? 3.What are we learning? 4.What is our evidence? 5.What does it mean for the challenge or question?

To get started, identify the important science question you need to answer. What affects how an object falls toward Earth? Write this at the TOP of your Project Board page.

What do we think we know? Write what you think you know about how things fall. Even though some things you will find are not completely true or accurate, you should record them anyway. Later you will be able to see how much you’ve learned, and discussions around these topics will help you figure out what you need to investigate.

What do we need to investigate? Record the things you need to learn more about. – Record what you don’t understand well yet. – Record what you and your group members disagree about. – Record questions you have.