Hovercrafts

(Sorry, there's only one image for this post -- I got so caught up in running the earlier sessions that I kept forgetting to pull my camera out!)

Admittedly, I was ridiculously excited for the Hovercraft activity, but a bit skeptical about how well it would work. It didn't seem possible to make something mobile (and fun for the kids) out of just bottle tops (with the caps), hot glue guns, CDs and balloons!

Once again, I grabbed this project from teachengineering.org (entitled "Hovercraft Racers"), but this time I did not tweak it. I decided it might be a little too dangerous and time consuming to have the students use the hot glue guns and a drill, so I prepared the bottle caps and CDs beforehand (see below for the product of 2 hours of cutting, drilling and gluing).

The only thing the kids really had to do to complete the hovercraft was stretch the balloon over the bottle cap (which proved to be relatively difficult for some of them). Afterwards, I had them complete a worksheet probing whether or not they realized how adding a pocket of air underneath the CD (from the balloons), the friction between the CD and the table is eliminated. Most of them reasoned it out and we discussed the matter.

For next semester, I will most likely add another short activity to this one since it didn't take as long as I had expected it to.

More updates to come soon!