Inquiry Inclined Plane/Lever

LI: To experiment with and create simple machines.

Our focus for Mrs Anderson's Inquiry group was to experiment with mechanisms using the lever and inclined plane. We have been enquiring about six simple machines and how they work.

The first activity we did was creating an operating mechanism based off of the ideals of an inclined plane. The purpose of the inclined plane was to use it to roll a Jaffa down the slope and see which inclined plane mechanism rolled the Jaffa further. The purpose of this task was to compare results and see what changes to the inclined plane allowed the Jaffa to roll further.

The second activity we did was create four different creative crafts that use levers. We created a mechanism that displayed clapping hands, waving hand, moving flags and a snapping crocodile. We created these crafts using split pins, thick paper, scissors, a ruler, a sketching pencil and thin card.

I enjoyed this task and found it very fun and creative because I was able to use my understanding of simple machines to create these fun crafts.