Newton's Law

We had a very interesting event occur in our classroom today.  There were a number of boys playing with balancing boards this morning.  The goal of these boards is to use their feet and body weight to make the boards balance.  Well one boy decided to conduct a little experiment that ended up turning into a science phenomenon!

In our classroom we have three mesh, squishy balls.  The smallest is green, the medium one is blue and the largest is red.  The children use these balls during play to roll or sometimes gently toss to each other.  One child thought he would try putting one of the balls on the end of the balancing board to see what happened and WALA....Newton's Laws were put into practice!  His first law states, "Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force," and his third law states, "For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction."   

Now some of you might think this is a little overboard to be doing in a classroom, however we first talked about rules with the balls, how high they can go, etc.  The learning that occurred was AMAZING!  The children explored, experimented and asked many questions such as, "What will happen if I use a smaller ball vs. a larger ball?" or "What happens if I step on it lightly instead of really hard?"  They had a ton of fun experimenting!  

Here are some pictures of the fun!

Here is Mason using the blue ball (which is at the very top of the picture).

Owen and Bryce try using the large, red ball with only a very light step.

Oopsie..the green ball went a little too high!  :)

Nice catch Preston!