Science Fair Help!

[KristinCB]

Lily (5th grade) wants to do a project on gravity and do up some sort of marble run?

Just wondering if anyone has any links or anything that we could use to guide it into some sort of clear direction?

(if you know of other cool projects related to gravity that might be neat as an alternative that would be fine too)

[Julie Billingsley]

Logan is also doing a science fair project. His class had to pick from this website- http://www.sciencebuddies.org/ Logan picked a physics project on the Gauss rifle (which isn't a rifle, it's a magnet thing). Hope that helps!

[YepBrook]

I saw something (I think Pinterest) about people using those foam floatation pool noodles sliced lengthwise as marble runs. I doubt you could even buy a pool noodle thingie up there this time of year, though.

[kristijoy]

Here's my pinterest board about gravity ideas: http://www.pinterest.com/kristijoyful/theme-gravity/

There should be a couple links on there for creating marble run design challenges using plumbers pipe insulation (a grey foam tube you get at home depot). It's more flexible that pool noodles. She could come up with a questions like: How tall can the first hill be so the marble can still make it up and over? (then you would do measurements of the height of the hill, how far the marble went after that etc...) You might also be able to ask "If you had two hills, how tall can the second one be compared to the first?" etc...

Another fun gravity thing would be so do some type of center of gravity balancing trick. There is geometry math type stuff you do to find the center of gravity. And she could have a interesting model that visitors to her little station could play with.

Or...if you had something really tall...(I always wanted to do this off the top of a cherry picker) you could do some drop tests with various items. Timing them, discussing air resistance etc...

Have fun!

[KristinCB]

wow!! awesome!! THANK YOU!!