In order to test flight and see how to protect things during flight, Year 4 had to make a parachute for an egg and see if it was unbroken after it had flown off the roof.
Have a look at the pictures below of us making our parachutes. Unfortunately, many of our eggs did break!
As we are learning about the human body, we completed an investigation to see if we could measure our lung capacity. We also investigated if physical activity could change our lung capacity.
We began by blowing into a balloon with just one exhale of breath. We measured the balloon with a partner and repeated this. We used this information to work out the volume of air that our lungs can hold.
We then repeated this activity of exhaling a breath into a balloon and measuring but first we had to run on the spot for 30 seconds. We did this 3 times and then we were exhausted!
We found that our lungs could hold more air when we were relaxed compared to after we had completed physical activity. We decided this was because when we are relaxed we can breathe in longer, bigger breaths. When we have done physical activity our lungs take in smaller breaths so that they can quickly get enough air into our bodies to send oxygen to our muscles where it’s needed.
We used this investigation as an opportunity to develop how we predict and interpret our results – we all made predictions about when our lungs could hold more air and even though we weren’t all right, we learnt that it’s ok to not be right when we predict as long as we learn something from our results.
We have really enjoyed the opportunity to explore so many different areas of science thanks to our topic and Science Week!
For Science Week we have been testing our brains to see how they handle mixed messages. We used a Stroop test to do this.
This is an example of a Stroop test.
We had to complete 2 activities. First we read the words on the card and a partner timed how long it took us. Then we had to say the colours of the words on the cards and a partner timed how long it took us. Before we started we all made predictions about which would be easier to do: read the words or say the colours. We didn’t all agree…some of us thought it would be easier to read the words because we know the words and others thought the colours would be easier because you didn’t really have to do any reading. Have a look at our pictures and then our results are below.
We found that the Stroop test was actually quite hard to do! We found it much easier to say the words we could see than to say the colours of the words. Some of us could say the words in around 12 seconds but it took nearly 30 seconds to say the colours. We think this is because our brain has to work harder to work out what it needs to say and gets a bit confused when trying to work out the colours and avoid saying the word it can see.
We really enjoyed testing our brains though and we are excited that we have more investigations to do this week!
Kings Monkton School - Year 4 