Science and Computing Week Year 4

Science and computing week:

Computing and Science week in Year 4 has been extremely interesting. Our focus for the week was motion and forces, with a particular focus on air resistance.

We now understand that air resistance is the force that affects objects when in the air. We deepened our understanding by comparing air resistance to the force of gravity. We used an example of a parachute to help us understand this. It was clear that gravity is the weaker force, otherwise the human would fall to the ground very quickly. Therefore, air resistance is the stronger force as this is what protects the human from hurting themselves. 

Once we had understood the way gravity and air resistance works, we made our own creations to compare which stayed in the air the longest and why. We linked this to cause and effect. Some children chose to make aeroplanes as they know that these are streamlined (one of our key words) to avoid air resistance. However, the children soon realised these were not effective when thinking about air resistance and the target of keeping it in the air the longest. Some also made parachutes that were shaped so they collected the air rather than the air passing by the object. These were most effective. 

Once we had made our creations, we timed them to see how long each one took to hit the ground. To measure our findings we used a stopwatch and then recorded our data in a table. This helped us to compare the findings and consider which creation was the most effective. It was clear that the bigger the aeroplane, the more time it took to fall to the ground. Similarly, the parachutes took longer because they were designed to trap the air. 

Linking to computing, we have created comic strips using Comic Life and an explanation video using an application called 'Explain Everything'. Sadly, Explain Everything is not compatible with the blog post but we will be sure to share these with you in assembly. 

We are excited to learn more!