Levers and Pulleys

Levers and Pulleys.

In inquiry this term with Alison I learnt about levers and pulleys. The first activities I did were with Meg, The first activity was building a catapult out of Popsicle sticks , a cotton ball , rubber bands and a spoon what I did was use Popsicle sticks to make the base of the catapult and tied them together and then attached the spoon to the top , after building the base I put a cotton ball in the catapult and then bent the spoon back and fired it the cotton ball went so far. The second activity was also based on levers and we learnt a bit more about the fulcrum and the importance of it. We had to use a ruler , vivid, cups and cubes. We used the vivid as the fulcrum and taped it to the table, I balanced the ruler on the fulcrum and taped the two cups to either side of the ruler and put as many cubes as I could to make them balance.When I did the challenge at the end of the third week my group of three built a simple machine, on the simple machine we had 2 people (Meg and Charlotte) starting the creation they dropped the marbles into a cup which started the machine. The marbles rolled from the start ramp to two cups and one marble fell on the floor and the other went into a big ramp the lead of the seat and lead to a seesaw which made the marble drop into a glass of water. I think the creation was successful sometimes and other times it wasn't successful.I learnt that. . .when you use a lever it helps lift something too heavy to lift with your bare hands, I also learnt about fulcrums and that you need to move the fulcrum around to make things balance better, Learning about pulleys was the best because we used 1 pulley and then 2 pulleys and that it lifted the marble in a cup way easier.