 |
 |
Basic Air Resistance
Name: Rigel
Status: student
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
What are some examples of air resistance for a 1st grader?
Replies:
Oh boy. Many of the really good ones involve experiences today's children may not get!
For example:
The pressure of air on your hand as you hold it outside the window of a moving car.
A falling leaf or leaves being blown across the lawn.
The force you feel when walking into the wind.
I suggest you use the tried and true demonstration of dropping a book
and a lightly crumpled piece of paper simultaneously. The book gets to
the floor first, of course, because air resistance holds up the paper.
Then, place the paper on the upper side of the book and do the drop.
Protected from the air resistance by the book, the paper sits atop the
book during the whole drop and both paper and book reach the ground
simultaneously.
This works best with a large book, such as a standard textbook, and when
the book is held with covers parallel to the ground.
Hopes this helps.
Bob Avakian
Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology
Maybe the most intuitive examples would be where the child can feel
the force (resistance) being exerted by the air. You can feel the wind
when you are riding a bike, or when you put your hand out a car window
while it is moving.
You might take the students outside on a windy day, or use a fan, and
then given them objects of different shapes to feel how shape affects
wind resistance -- for example let them feel the difference with the
same rigid piece of cardboard help with its face perpendicular to the
wind, or held with its edge facing the wind.
It is important to use the same object held in different orientations
so that the students realize it is not mass or weight that is involved.
Hope this helps,
Burr Zimmerman
Click here to return to the Physics Archives
| |
Update: June 2012
|
|
