🛩️ Straw glider hoop size: the whole packet

🛩️ Straw glider hoop size · 3rd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 50 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 how big the glider's hoops are, then how far the glider flies 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

• 📄 Paper: 2 sheets
• 🥤 Straws: 3, all the same
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler
• ✂️ Kid scissors
• 🩹 Tape
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 🙅 Never at faces

1. Cut six strips 3 cm wide: three short ones 6, 9 and 12 cm long, and three long ones 12, 18 and 24 cm.
2. Tape the two ends of each strip together to make a hoop.
3. Tape the 6 cm hoop to one end of a straw and the 12 cm hoop to the other end: the small glider.
4. Make the medium glider from the 9 and 18 cm hoops, and the big glider from the 12 and 24 cm hoops.
5. Put a strip of masking tape on the floor as your throwing line.
6. Hold the small glider by its straw, small hoop in front, and throw it gently across the room.
7. Measure from the line to where it first touched the floor, and write it down.
8. Throw it two more times, always from behind the line.
9. Throw the medium glider three times and the big glider three times.
10. Find the mean for each size and draw a line graph.

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

I changed: Hoop size   I measured: how far the glider flies (cm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: hoop size along the bottom, cm 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: keep the back hoop the same and change only the front hoop, then graph the distance for each front hoop.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: do bigger hoops make a straw glider fly farther?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how big the glider's hoops are would change how far the glider flies, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how big the glider's hoops are (Small hoops, Medium hoops, Big hoops) and measured how far the glider flies in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same kind of straw and paper strips of the same width for every hoop the same, so only how big the glider's hoops are 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: Small hoops and Big hoops 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: keep the back hoop the same and change only the front hoop, then graph the distance for each front hoop.