Balancing Act

Science Central, our local kids museum, hosts Homeschool afternoons where they offer a science class for homeschooled children in the area. Today we headed out the door for Zeke's "The Math is Right" class. We got there a little early, so we grabbed one of their adventure back packs to learn a little bit about the physics of balancing.


The first explorer bag had two dolls and the boys had to balance them on their heads and feet. Then they were to discuss why they could or couldn't get the doll to stand up.

It was discovered that the doll with the heavier head would stand on her head and the doll with the heavier feet would stand on her feet.

The next bag gave them the task of balancing 10 nails on the head of a nail. After several unsuccessful attempts we looked at the answer and Zeke successfully balanced the nails by hooking them together.

When we returned to our table and pulled out our last bag, the task was to balance a popsicle stick on the end of their finger. The boys all immediately knew that this would not work and thought it was a silly request, but they tried it anyway. But of course this was not the end of the lesson. The next set of instructions were to create a set of counter weights to enable them to balance the popsicle stick on the end of their finger. After a few minutes of attaching pipecleaners and paperclips to their toothpicks they were all able to successfully balance their popsicle sticks.