We’ve built a great new science exploration tool, which we’ll definitely be using in our new Family Inventors’ Lab class and we MIGHT premiere it at this weekend’s Healthy Kids, Healthy Families Fair if beta testing continues to go well.
The Exploratorium shared a project idea for building a Wind Tube.It’s basically a clear tube mounted over a fan. Kids can place items into the tube and see what happens. Heavy items just sit there. Lightweight items shoot out the top of the tube. Other items may float, spin, or rattle back and forth. The video at the the top of this post shows some of our initial experiments. (If you want to learn how to make a wind tube, check out my next post.)
Dave Stroud says this about how kids (and adults!) play with a wind tube.
The Wind Tubes intrinsically encourage a particular type of play that helps guests experience the way science works. The intent is for guests to internalize a science based mindset – do something, measure the outcome, make changes, do something, measure the outcome, compare the outcomes, make changes, do something, measure the outcome, compare the outcomes – repeat this process until you run out of time. The user experiences the phenomena by exploring it, rather than being shown an outcome and having it explained. (Source)
I have definitely seen this in action. My four year old has played with the tube a lot in the past 24 hours. (And my 17 year old had a great time with it too…) And rather than wanting to fly the same thing over and over, it’s definitely been (for him and for me) an exercise in looking around the room and deciding what to try next! As he experiments, I hear him talking differently than he has talked about most things in the past: “I wonder what this will do?” “What can I try next?” “What do you think will happen this time?” “That didn’t work, I wonder if I could combine it with this?” It’s definitely “tinkering” in action!
As Stroud says, this activity results in:
• Making guests [child] less reliant on “authority” to answer questions
• A higher level of engagement and deeper investigation
• Guests defining their own success and making their own meaning (user defined outcomes)
• Generating a particular category of questions such as: How can I get it to…? What if I…? Instead of: Why does it…? What makes it…?
Here are some of the experiments my family has developed just in a few hours of play:
The frisbie. (really a plastic lid) It gets caught in the air currents and will float forever. We’ve learned that if you put your arm over the fan to block some of the air flow, the frisbie will sink down the tube.
Cardboard boat. This cardboard snack tray will float easily on its own. The small plastic monster will not – it’s too heavy and not aerodynamic. But, put the monster in the boat and it floats!
Parachutes. This plastic pterodactyl won’t fly even though it has wings. But, if you build it a parachute out of a plastic bag and a pipe cleaner, it soars.
Pipe cleaner spinner. My personal favorite is this twirled-up pipe cleaner that spins and spins as it floats in the air.
Tops. And speaking of spinning, watch these plastic tops. They don’t float, but they definitely respond to the wind!
As he plays, he’s learning hands-on about aerodynamics, wind currents, how lightweight things fly better than heavy things, but even heavy things can fly if they have a parachute or an “air ship” that can catch the wind currents. Having the ability to play hands-on with this will allow him to internalize the learning much more than when he covers all this stuff in high school physics class someday!
If you want to read more about “transactivity” and what makes this such a cool learning activity, check out Stroud’s post: http://www.exhibitfiles.org/vertical_wind_tubes. This is a great “case study” post, which shares observations on how people play with the tubes.
Here are links to some other people’s experiments with and thoughts about Wind Tubes
Info from the Exploratorium: directions on how to make a wind tube include ideas for what materials you can “fly” in it. They have a collection of photos and thoughts about their process of designing the wind tubes. and there’s a debrief from facilitators, sharing their observations of how visitors played with the tubes.
Here’s a slightly different design, and observations from using it.
Design challenge: soaring satellites (for older kids) http://legacy.mos.org/designchallenges/media/ed_guides/Satellites_EdGuide.pdf