How will your roly poly move?
4
Linking with science
Investigating the performance of roly polys provides many opportunities for fair testing as indicated in the "links to other subjects" section of the unit. The use of an adjustable ramp provides an interesting opportunity for pupils to investigate how far different sorts of roly poly will roll without the difficulty of "But she pushed hers harder than I did!"
You can use a board plus a chair as the basic set up, adding old exercise books to the chair to give adjustability. There is a useful exercise in measuring how far the toys roll. You can measure each one with a tape measure as it rolls, or you can use chalk to mark out measurements on the floor so that measurements can be read off as soon as the toy has stopped moving.
Designing tables to record the data is an important part of the investigation. You can discuss with pupils what should be recorded - the name of the person or their roly poly; the type of roly poly, the height of the ramp, how far the roly poly rolls from the end of the ramp.
Once the data has been collected it can be organised in a variety of ways - according to type of roly poly, as a league table of rolling performance. Once the data has been organised in these ways it is very important that pupils are encouraged to explain it. Encourage them by asking questions like this:
- Why does this roly poly rolled further than any of the others?
- Why is this one the worst roller?
- Why do racers roll further than ditherers? (assuming that they do!)