Friday, February 27, 2009

Science of Simple Machines-Pulleys

Sarah has really been enjoying her science this year. She is using Exploring Creation with Science CD-Rom. Not only does she enjoy the fact that it is on the computer, she loves all of the experiments. I love that she is having so much fun learning. It is an added bonus that all of the experiments so far have used common household items - no big extra purchases.


This module is all about simple machines. Sarah and her dad did an experiment earlier in the week on levers. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of that. However, they had a good time and Sarah learned a lot. She was amazed at how levers decreased the amount of work needed to lift an object.




Today Sarah, Hannah and Mom performed an experiment that showed how a pulley or system of pulleys decreases the amount of work. You can see we used a broom, actually two of them, and a piece of rope. Whoever held the end of the rope tried to pull the two holding the brooms together. Neither girl could pull the brooms together when the rope was just wrapped around one handle. However, when the rope was wrapped around both broom handles to form a "pulley" both girls could easily pull the brooms together.

We had a lot of fun with our pulley experiment. Of course the laundry you can see on the couch was the next task, and that wasn't nearly as much fun.

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