ox Chapel Area FOX CHAPEL AREA SCHOOL NEWS
An O ’ Hara student explained how he and his partner used the concepts of buoyancy , displacement , weight , and density to design and build a boat . Students used their student reflection journals throughout the innovative inquiry capstone .
The Fox Chapel Area student engineers explored through hands-on investigation and connection to real-world scenarios as they later completed other design challenges back at their own schools . Over the 10-week innovative inquiry capstone , they investigated the physical laws of bridge construction ; investigated the forces of gravity and air resistance ; explored relationships between buoyancy , displacement , weight , and density ; experimented with the relationships between potential and kinetic energy ; and investigated simple machines .
According to Kerr Elementary gifted support teacher Susan Kreit , “ Students are highly motivated , eager to participate , and are learning to work with others .”
O ’ Hara students with their gifted support teacher , Marilyn Hall , tested to see how many marbles could be added without sinking their boat . This particular boat held 96 marbles .
Mrs . Kreit also said , “ Students are learning to be comfortable asking questions and posing problems , finding varied avenues to pursue answers , thinking flexibly when things turn out differently than expected , and making suggestions to peers about how they might improve a design .”
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Fifth grade O ’ Hara student Darren Jayaratnam found that when he and his partner built their boat for the buoyancy challenge , that compact boats would sink . “ We learned about surface area ,” he said . “ We made five different designs and we decided on a flat-bottom design .”
When Kerr fifth graders Jack Cannon and Katie Haas began to build and test their original design in the potential / kinetic energy challenge , things didn ’ t go exactly as planned . Jack said , “ At one point the blocks started wobbling and collapsed .” The two discovered they had to use more blocks in order to stabilize their structure . “ We were expecting more turns . It was smaller than we thought ,” Katie said of their structure . Their final successful design was about a foot high and had just one turn , but Jack and Katie were pleased because when they moved the lever that allowed the marble to release , it successfully rolled down the chute and landed in the cup .
For the final challenge , the 50 students gathered once again and worked in small groups at Kerr to design and build a Rube Goldberg machine , a complicated device that ’ s built to perform a simple task . For the project , the students had to build an obstacle course for a marble . The students applied the knowledge they had gained throughout the innovative inquiry to create a minimum of three different engineering actions to achieve the task of watering a plant .
Kerr students designed a structure out of KEVA Blocks that carried a ball to a basket without an external push or pull .