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Experiment No. 1

Balancing Clown!

Experiment: To show how lowering the centre of gravity improves balance.

Materials:

You will need:

Thick Card
Glue
Scissors
Colouring Pencils or Markers
Coins (5c or 2c)
Blue Tack

Method:

What you have to do:

1) Get a piece of card with the picture of a clown on it.
Our card was a bit light, so we doubled it and stuck the two halves together.

2) Cut out the clown and colour it .

3) Try to balance it on the edge of a ruler or your finger. Did it balance? No?

4) Put some weight on each hand, using the blue tack and coins. Now try to balance it again.

Result: The clown will balance on the edge of your ruler or finger.

Conclusion: By putting a weight on the hands of the clown, you are lowering the centre of gravity and helping your clown to balance!

Note: Knowing a little about the centre of gravity can be very important. Gravity pulls everything down - and everything has a central point of gravity where gravity exerts the most pull. By lowering this central point, as we demonstrated with the clowns, you can achieve much greater balance.

A double decker bus needs to be filled from the bottom to have a low centre of gravity. If it was only filled on the top, chances are it would topple over!!

Fourth Class Experiments