1. Pop cans, tents and bridges!
Miss Laverty 2012
***worksheets, experiments and lesson adapted from the Edmonton Public curriculum book***

2. Happy Monday! Hand out the workbooks Grab a copy of today's worksheet
Sit down and show me that you are ready to “move some pop cans”

3. Magic Moving Pop Cans
Challenge: use only a straw and your breath to make the two pop cans move towards each other
Materials: two pop cans and one straw
Work with a partner to try different ways to get the cans to move towards each other. Describe your strategies

4. Magic Moving Pop Cans What were your strategies? What worked best?
Diagram

5. Magic Moving Pop Cans Results:
The easiest way to get the cans to move towards each other was to blow through the center of the cans with the drinking straw

6. Magic Moving Pop Cans Inferences:
When we blow through the center of the two cans, the air is moving quickly
Bernoulli’s principle states that the faster air moves, the less pressure it exerts on surfaces over which it is passing
By reducing the air pressure between the cans, the air pressure on the other side of the cans is now greater than the air in between them
This causes the cans to be pushed together by the regular air pressure of the room

7. Magic Moving Pop Cans
Real life examples:
Wind chimes

8. London Bridge is falling down
Question: how does the speed of air affect the pressure it exerts?
Materials: paper
Procedure
Fold a sheet of paper in half to create a tent shape
Predict what will happen when you blow through the tent.
Stand the tent up on the table and hold the corners between your thumbs and forefingers
Blow through the tent
Record observations

9. Paper Tents and Tunnels
Record a before diagram and a during diagram
Try the tent shape and the tunnel shape

10. Paper Tents and Tunnels
Inferences
Blowing through the tent produces faster moving air
Faster moving air creates a low pressure area inside the tent
The higher pressure of the air on the outside of the tent causes the sides to bend in

11. Paper Tents and Tunnels
Real life example:
“Galloping Gertie”: a suspension bridge from the 1940s couldn’t handle air blowing under and over the bridge

12. Group Work Stay on task Respect the learning of everyone
Follow instructions