This term the year four classes are learning about types of FORCES.

A force is a push or a pull that makes things move, stop moving or change direction.

We played games of golden child on the basketball court and talked about the the ways we applied force to the ball by pushing or pulling it to make it move.

Later on, we discussed how we push toy cars to make them move, stop or change direction. We talked about how when we apply more or less force when pushing the toy car it moves at different speeds and travels varying distances. Then we came up with a theory about forces.

OUR THEORY

Applying more force to an object will make it move faster and further.

We designed an investigation to test out our theory and discussed all the variables to make sure our investigation was ‘fair’.

Independent Variable

The amount of force used to push the car.

Dependent Variable

Distance the car travelled (cm)

Controlled Variables

Use the same car
Same floor surface
Start from same place
Same person pushes car
Object used to push car (finger or marker)

            

We measured the distances our cars travelled after a ‘small’ and ‘large’ push and compiled all our data. After analysing our data for patterns we concluded that our results supported our theory that applying more force to an object will make it travel faster and further. We then brainstormed other ways we could investigate our theory further, like throwing a javelin, bouncing a basketball and kicking a soccer ball.

If you want to find out more about forces, check out  this YouTube song clip below.