By Jennifer Tangeman
Landis Elementary fourth-grade teacher Greg Dominick has figured out a way to make physics fun for his students, and for free, too.
For the past month, Dominick has encouraged his students to find supplies from their family recycling bins and junk drawers in order to create “marvelous marble machines.”
“I feel like a lot of times, as teachers, we nickel and dime parents,” he said. “With the economy, and being this close to the holidays, I didn’t want to make families pay for anything.
“We are so used to going out and purchasing what we need, but this made them think outside the box.”
The fourth-grade pupils collected supplies such as old boxes, two-liter bottles and paper towel rolls to create miniature roller coasters.
Dominick said the project taught them problem solving and trial and error.
“Things don’t normally work out the way you want them to,” he said. “They are starting to learn that it’s a problem solving world. They take what they’re given and make a solution.”
The teacher explained some of his students remade their marvelous marble machines 50 times before getting it just right.
Peri Walker, a pupil in the fourth-grade class, explained that she and project partner Makinsey Long started out with paper towel rolls and then tried various different boxes before finding a perfect fit with an Animal Cracker box.
Long demonstrated their creation, showing how a marble traveled down tubing before spinning in a funnel and reaching its destination.
“Sometimes it bounces off, kind of like a trampoline,” she said.
Morrigan Kabat named her machine The Plunge, she said, because marbles plunge down into a game she created as part of the roller coaster. When marbles traveled to the bottom of Kabat’s creation they landed in a shuffle-board type feature. Kabat used a pencil to push the marble into different scoring zones.
Another machine was named The Vomit Machine. A poster promoting the project described The Vomit Machine as heart dropping and having sharp turns. It was guaranteed to give a scare.
Besides problem solving and trial and error, Dominick said the project taught the children scientific lessons such as forces, motion, velocity and varying speed.
“They are modeled after a basic roller coaster,” he said. “Some of them didn’t believe me when I told them about where the steepest peak needed to be to create momentum, but they found out on their own.”
• Jennifer Tangeman is a reporter for the Pharos-Tribune. She can be reached at 574-732-5148 or jennifer.tangeman@pharostribune.com.
