Rainbow Rotors

Experiment with flight! Make bright helicopters and toss them into the air. Can you make them fall faster? Slower? Spin wildly? Gravity and friction have never been so much fun!

• 1.

  What happens when you throw a ball or sweatshirt in the air? It always falls back to the Earth. Maybe you noticed that some things return a lot faster than others?

• 2.

  Well, two forces are at work when you toss things up: gravity, the force that keeps drawing things back to the Earth and friction, the force that slows movement. Here’s a fascinating science experiment that you can try again and again.

• 3.

  With Crayola® Scissors, cut a sheet of paper into four strips across the paper’s width. These strips are your Rainbow Rotors.

• 4.

  Save one strip for test purposes. Fold the remaining three in half across their widths. Open the fold. From one end, cut a slit down the center lengthwise almost to the fold. Cut each piece this way.

• 5.

  At the fold, cut one third of the way into each strip. Fold both sidepieces into the center panel to form a long tail in the center of this end of the strip. Bend about one-third of the end up toward the middle. Repeat with the other two Rainbow Rotors.

• 6.

  Decorate all four strips, on both sides, with Crayola Rainbow Twistables. Think about the shapes and how your rotors will spin. Refold any folds.

• 7.

  Work in teams to experiment with your Rainbow Rotors. Use a stopwatch, video camera, or other technology to record your investigations.

• 8.

  Throw the uncut strip in the air. Watch how it falls to the ground. Does it spin? Fall end to end? How long does it take to reach the floor?

• 9.

  Now toss the folded pieces, one at a time. What happens to them as they fall? Do they move in a different way than the first paper? How long do they take to reach the floor? Record the differences and similarities of each flight. How can you explain what

Benefits

• Students study two forces of movement: gravity and friction.
• Students create paper models to further their understanding of these forces.
• Students record their findings and draw conclusions.

Adaptations

• Set up a controlled experiment and chart your findings. Find a place where you can drop your Rainbow Rotors so the distance remains the same. Then change other variables such as weight (attach paper clips, for example). Adapt the rotors by bending, length
• Work in teams to develop fast and slow Rainbow Rotors. Race them. Compare findings.
• Study how a helicopter works. Compare this to other flying machines. What scientific principles are shared and what are unique to each?
• Find and study this means of locomotion as it is found in nature. For example, experiment with seedpods of trees such as maple, ash, and elm.