Static Electricity Experiment

For our energy science unit we got a Tubberware full of various items. The only thing is there is no instructions to go with the items, so we are left to make sense of all the items ourselves. Two items made sense to me: balloons and a glove. Static Electricity!!! In October, I had done a fun science experiment with my five year old that made ghostly coffee filters dance with a charged balloon. I had to make a manipulated variable to make it a true experiment so I had students try to charge the balloon with three different things: their hair, a glove, and a paper towel. Then I had students measure the distance from the balloon to the coffee filters from when the filters started to float up.

The experiment write-up in their science journals

You can't do static electricity without the classic hair pics ;o)

Types of Energy

In 5th grade the standard is that students need to know about the five major types of energy: kinetic, heat (thermal), sound, light, and electricity. Mrs. Judd had introduced the different types of energy during her systems unit at the beginning of the year. I wanted to have students a dig a little different. We read from this great book from Delta Science. I love how on each page the book highlights different types of reading strategies and questions that help them think about what they have learned. I hope I can find more in this series.

After we did some reading, each table group teams was assigned a different type of energy. The groups each made a poster and then it was their job to teach the rest of the class everything they learned about their energy. Just look how their posters turned out:

The Parallelograms had light energy-love their lightbulb that they named Edison

The Trapezoid's poster was on sound energy. We also played with a tuning fork!

The Isosceles learned and taught about thermal energy. Great fire!!!

The Rhombus group did both kinetic & potential energy. Loved using a full bus to demonstrate more kinetic energy because it has more mass!

The Equalateral's had electricity. They represented both current and static electricity.