💨 A cup spinner and the wind: the whole packet

💨 A cup spinner and the wind · 4th–8th grade · 3 days of testing · free · 45 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change where the spinner stands, then how many turns the spinner makes in 30 seconds will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🥤 Straws: 2
• 🥤 Paper cups: 5 paper cups, all the same: four for the spinner and one for sand
• 📎 Paper fasteners (brads): 1 brad
• ✏️ A new pencil with an eraser on the end
• 🏖️ Sand (from a sandbox, or play sand)
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🩹 Tape

Be safe: 👶 Small parts · 🌳 Outside

1. Tape two straws together in a cross, with their middles on top of each other.
2. Tape a paper cup on its side to each straw end, all with their open mouths facing the same way round.
3. Colour the outside of one cup with a crayon, so you can count its turns.
4. Grown-up: A grown-up pushes a brad through the middle of the cross and into the pencil's eraser, loose enough to spin.
5. Fill the last paper cup with sand and stand the pencil in it, eraser up, so the spinner sits on top.
6. Blow on the spinner to check that it turns easily.
7. Choose three spots on the ground: the open yard, beside the house and under a tree.
8. Stay on the ground: never put the spinner on a roof, a wall or a ledge.
9. Stand the spinner in the first spot, start the timer and count how many times the coloured cup goes round in 30 seconds.
10. Write the number down, then do the other two spots, in a different order each day.
11. Repeat on two more days at the same time, to get three tries for each spot, and stay inside in a storm.
12. Find the mean turns for each spot and draw a bar graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Where it stands   I measured: how many turns the spinner makes in 30 seconds (turns)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: where it stands along the bottom, turns up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: stand the spinner on the ground and on a sturdy low table, and graph the turns at each height.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: where is it windiest around your home?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing where the spinner stands would change how many turns the spinner makes in 30 seconds, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed where the spinner stands (Open yard, Beside the house, Under a tree) and measured how many turns the spinner makes in 30 seconds in turns.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same spinner every time and counting for 30 seconds each time the same, so only where the spinner stands was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Open yard and Under a tree gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: stand the spinner on the ground and on a sturdy low table, and graph the turns at each height.