Applied Science – Momentum and Youtube

Applied Science

Well, the other day when we cycled to Grandma’s house we got talking about Momentum. (There’s a really big hill in between us) As the girls haven’t been riding all that much, they were both decidedly nervous going down the hill, so we started talking about going up the other side. How can you make that less work? Momentum. So a few days later I walk in to the living room (with no other conversation in between) and Big has built a ramp. Why, I asked? “I’m playing with momentum to see which of my balls has more momentum. It’s the heaviest one….” Blah blah blah, you know how it goes.

You’ll have to excuse the cushions, they were in the pile to be recovered before she pinched them!!

Naturally building ramps and running different balls down it, led on to building……..

Rube Goldberg Machines!

One of the kid’s favourite things to watch on YouTube are Rube Goldberg machine videos. If you’ve never seen one- GO! NOW! My personal favourites are THIS ONE by Joseph’s machines- and THIS ONE by OK GO! OK GO have some of the most creative and technically interesting music videos I have seen. They raced to fame(ish) with an absolutely amazing video using a couple of treadmills and a single camera angle. If there’s one thing that I value above all else – it’s something simple done well. The modern world has put such stock in the idea that to be valuable it must be complex. But hands down the beauty of something simplistic can be astounding when done perfectly will outshine the most complicated and engineered concepts. Which is ironic, considering my love of Rube Goldberg machines, which embodies the exact opposite idea!

Anyway, this all eventually led to falling down a YouTube rabbit hole and we spent the entire afternoon watching and experimenting with Science Max! Who we hadn’t come across before, and is brilliant. Although he reminds me so much of Alan Tudyk it quite threw me.

Colouring

And what very grown-up activity kept me busy while the children were busy conducting scientific experiments? I was colouring. Yep. Well, after my realisation the other day that I should share these resource materials- I have been working tirelessly (…ish) to get all of the listing covers finished, because last time I clearly just stopped halfway through and I need them to match. Find and download all of the colouring sheets HERE.