Specialty Spotlight: Science

Pick up a ball and toss it to a friend.  It’s pretty likely they’re going to catch it. Why is that? Currently, the 3rd graders are exploring the predictable way in which things move. Through the time we have spent growing up in and learning about this planet we’re on, we’ve each become an expert on forces like gravity, air resistance, and the push given to a ball by a thrower’s arm. We know that the ball is not going to leave our hand, go in curlicues, and wind up rolling around a random path on the ceiling. Isaac Newton wondered about this predictability too and came up with his Three Laws of Linear Motion.

Third graders have been working their way through these laws, making careful observations of simple movements of objects, as well as wondering at the fascinating ways in which more complex systems move (an Euler’s Disc or a gyroscope, pictured, which shows angular momentum).