Fun Physics for Visual and Kinaesthetic learners

By H. Gray, Teacher of Science

Models can play an important role in making science lessons interesting, engaging and fun! They help students discover features and find out facts about the idea or theory we are modelling. It could be a model of something we can’t see with the naked eye such as atoms or it could be something so vast, we find it hard to imagine the size of, such as the Universe.

Models make the scientific ideas more simple to understand. Students gain the knowledge and facts from visual aids and from building models themselves to help them achieve well in science.

After researching ideas to make the topic ‘waves’ memorable for my Year 8 class I observed a jelly baby wave machine made at the National Stem Learning centre with the Institute of Physics.  It was a simple but very effective model illustrating transverse wave motion.

I produced a large demonstration model then involved the students in making their own mini-wave machines. As you can see from the photographs the machine structure involved placing jellybabies on the end of skewers or cocktail sticks at equal distances down the adhesive strip.

We talked about the structure of the waves, how the waves travel and how energy is transferred as the end of the wave machine was altered.

Students produced a poster using the scientific words to explain how their wave machine had helped them to understand the properties of waves. Some key words included: transverse, frequency, amplitude, wavelength, energy, matter, particles.

Many students talked about the machine reminding them of the structure of DNA they had been learning about in biology. This gave me the opportunity to extend their learning by making a double helix and using the coloured jellybabies as different bases and their pairs.

The students really enjoyed the lesson and with a ‘thumbs up’ at the end I felt most students had achieved the learning objectives.