- Aerated Water
- Air Engine
- Air Table
- Are you Hot or Not?
- Balancing Act
- Bending Beams
- Block the gap
- Braille
- Bridge the Gap
- Chalk Wall
- Changing Faces
- Chaotic Motion
- Circle of Discovery
- Circle of Discovery- The Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Bridge Design
- Circle of Discovery-Ideas hub
- Circle of Discovery-Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Medicine
- Circle of Discovery-photography
- Circle of Discovery: Design - Earthquake
- Circulation
- Colour Wheel
- Communication Codes
- Communication Dishes
- Computer
- Crystallography
- Digestive System
- Down the Drain
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Fibre Optics
- Flight Simulator
- Gear Table
- Handshake Mirror
- Harmonograph
- High Flyer
- Hit the Target
- Horizontal Periscope
- Human Battery
- It's Electric
- Larger Than Life
- Lift Me Pull You
- Light Table
- Lock Box
- Making Waves
- Mini Harmonograph
- Mobile Phone
- Move It
- Nervous System
- Newtons Cradle
- Organ Pipe
- Organ Pipe Tune
- Oscillating Pendulums
- Pendulums
- People Power
- Periscope
- Prove Pythagoras
- Radar
- Radio Station
- Reactable
- Reflection Refraction
- Robot Arm
- Science of Sport
- Sensation
- Simple Camera
- Simple Circuits
- Smoke Tunnel
- Solar Energy
- Sound Waves
- Structures and Stresses
- Telescope
- The Exhibition
- The Eye
- The Lung and Chest Cavity
- The Wheel Race
- Thermal Imager
- Tornado
- Tower of Hanoi
- Universe Wall
- Up and Down
- Vertical Periscope
- Viscosity
- Viscosity Plungers
- Volume and Mass
- Vortex
- Watch Your Waste
- Weight Lifter
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Wind Tunnel
Structures and Stresses
Activity.... Do – Think - Learn
When forces act on a structure the material is put under stress. Special (polarising) filters are used to show the stresses.
Which part of each model will show the greatest stress?
How do the stresses change as the force is increased or decreased?
The Science Bit
Light waves travel in all directions. Polarising glass filters out waves and allows travelling light only in one direction through. When this light travels through stressed plastics it splits into colours of a rainbow. Where the lines are closest together shows the area of most stress. Designers of many products such as chairs, bridges and hooks use plastic models and polarising filters to discover where the object encounters the most stress. This way the designers can improve the design of the object to make it stronger.
Curriculum
Pushes and Pulls
- That it is not only ourselves that make things move by pushing
- To ask questions about what is causing movement
Forces and Movement
- That sometimes pushes and pulls can change the shape of objects
- That pushes and pulls are examples of forces
Forces in action
- That the earth and objects are pulled towards each other, this gravitational attraction causes objects to have weight
- That weight is a force and is measure in Newton’s
- That several forces may act on one object
Last Modified: 26/07/2011
