Archimedes Day

Achimedes Thoughtful by Fetti

Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.
Reportedly said by Archimedes concerning the use of levers

We had some science fun this week. Caleb is reading Archimedes and the Door to Science by Jeanne Bendick and the younger ones were reading Achimedes Takes a Bath by Joan Lexau. Archimedes was a Greek scientist and mathematician. He lived in the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily in the 3rd century before Christ. Archimedes wrote about many scientific and mathematical principles- physics (buoyancy, simple machines) and geometry, just to name a few.

First, we watched a short clip from Brainpop.com about buoyancy and then we all went around the house and picked out five small objects. We made a chart in our science notebook and predicted whether each object would sink or float. Then we recorded the actual outcome. Next, we made generalizations about what types of materials float and also the shapes that were more likely to float. We also looked here to see the principle of water displacement, among other things.

Next, we watched a few clips from Brainpop (we love it!) about simple machines- there are five: the lever, pulley, wheel, axle and incline plane. Although Archimedes did not invent any of these, he was the first to write extensively about the principles involved. He also used many in his inventions; several of which were reportedly used to defend the city of Syracuse when it was attacked by the Romans. Next, the boys went around the house looking for examples of levers. In case you didn't know, (I didn't) there are three classes of levers. Some of the examples of levers that we found were a playmobil catapult, a pair of tweezers, a wheelbarrow.... (well, we couldn't actually find our playmobil one but we talked about how it is a good example of a second class lever). And Adam demonstrated how to make a catapult out of Lincoln logs. Then we found out that if you move the fulcrum closer to the end you get a lot more distance. Let's just hope that he does not apply this principle at the dinner table. Ahem. Lastly, they made a drawing for their science notebook that included at least one example of each of the five simple machines. Here is Caleb's drawing:


I think what made this so much fun is that I previously knew very little about this area of science. So, we were all learning together which makes for a good day!