Churchill Science

202 played the Simple Machines Game in class together. Some of the items were hard to find. We answered the questions together. We thought that some of the questions were hard, but we wanted to keep playing!

Click here to play!

Click the picture to play the game!

Playgrounds are fun for kids, but they also follow the laws of physics. We’ve been learning about gravity and friction and simple machines with 202!

For our end-of-unit project, we designed our own playgrounds. We’ll post those photos soon. In the meantime, here’s a short video about the Imagination Playground in a Box:

During yesterday’s launch, the space shuttle suffered some damage. Some foam tiles, which protect the shuttle from burning up when it enters Earth’s atmosphere, have fallen off or were scuffed. So far, as this news report says, NASA doesn’t know how much damage there is. There are also different options for fixing the damage if it turns out to be a big problem.

Try rubbing your hands together very fast – you can feel the heat building up. This is what happens when a flying object like a spaceship lands on a planet or moon with an atmosphere. The ship rubs against the air in the atmosphere and a LOT of heat is built up. This is because of a force called friction. It’s super-important to have a heat shield so that the ship won’t burn up. A few years ago, the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed because of damage to its heat shield.