Emery: “How do you make this move?”
Miriam Wynne: With another magnet, watch.”
Logan: “Hey, Emery, watch this! It can stick to my chair!”
We are experimenting with all the different kinds of magnets in our classroom and we have three questions:
- What can you pick up with a magnet?
- What happens when two magnets meet?
- Why???
We decided to collect all the magnets we could find after making a list of “FORCES” we have experienced in the world. We had encountered a fairly simplistic physics picture book at the library and we wanted to get a little deeper into it:
- Pulling!
- Pushing!
- Magnetism
- Friction
- GRAVITY
What’s Gravity?
Miriam Wynne: Something that helps us stick to the earth
Emery: Like magnets!
Isaac: A gigantic magnet!
Miriam Angelo: It’s a force!
Audrey: See, I jump DOWN! (not up)
Emery: Throwing sticks! (they fall down)
We decide that since magnets are coming up a lot as we try to understand gravity, we should do some experiments. This is what we found:
Magnets!
“I can’t put it here! It’s keeping me away!”
“It’s attracting on the other side!”
“You picked it up–the other magnet!”
“These just stick together!”
“If you put it on the side, it just flips over! And these don’t really stick together, but these two stick together.”
“All of these stick together!”
“…because they are different kinds of magnetic, so they like each other.”
“They stick to metal!”
“I can make this move!”
“What! Under the table, it sticks!”
“Um. magnets move one another even from under the table.”
“I can stop it [the magnet] from rolling [with another magnet]”
Eitim Class 