Stu+Woodward

Please direct questions and updates to Stu Woodward here. Dear Mr. Woodward Sam Hayes will ask his mom to coordinate with you when you can meet with us. I have done some experimenting with a tiny motor and a potentiometer (dial to adjust resistance in current). This seem to work somewhat, for making the motor go and adjusting the speed. You are welcome to try and rig this to the ring; you will need to figure out how. I will give them to you, they work with 5 or so batteries.
 * Sam, Matt, and Bo:**

Another thing you could try is using a pulley wheel (I can give you that too) and something like a bike tire. Put the bike upside down, put the ring on the wheel and push it against the tire while rotating the pedal at a steady speed. You could even rotate the gyro ring by hand, as long as you moved it at a consistent speed.

The idea is that you can try it out at several speeds and measure how long the chatter rings stay spinning. In order to do it scientifically, you need to keep the gyro ring at a consistent speed each time and be able to measure how fast it is going. Make some kind of mark on it so you can count how many times it rotates in 1 minute.

How can I get these things to you? I can drop them off somewhere if you would like to try them, but it would help if I could explain how to connect the motor to the batteries.

Thanks, -S.W.


 * Q:** We know what we are going to do in the experiment, but we still haven't found anything to keep the ring spinning at a constant rate. Do you have anything we could use or know how we could find something?Sam,Matt,and Bo


 * A:** I have some ideas- I will have to try some things out and get back to you

**//Here is the Science Fair Paperwork collected for your groups this week.... Brian and Jodi Burda//**


 * Q:** Since we already have done the majority of our papers, would you still advise us to start over with a new topic?


 * A:** If you like to tinker, you could make your test scientific by making something that turns the gyro ring at a steady speed (maybe get help from Dad?). I don't think this would be too hard to do, but it would take some work. Did you have any other ideas? I think it would be a nice project if you could get it to work.

-Samuel Hayes, Matthew Rhilinger, and Bo Henderson.
 * Q:** We have been working and researching for information to write our research paper. "We came across the term **precession**" and did not know the meaning of it, although the website said it is the rotation of the spin axis. Can you help us understand it more?

[|spinning top]
 * A:** Think about a spinning top. It doesn't just spin around, it wobbles. That wobbling is its precession. See this example of a spinning top:

Bo Henderson, Matthew Rhilinger, and I, Samuel Hayes are experimenting with a gyro ring. We are still working on our research question, but we can't find more than one source on the internet. When we search "science about gyro rings" results are mostly about buying gyro rings and do not give us information about the real science of it. Do you have any suggestions?
 * Q:** Hi Mr. Woodward.

[|another with a slow motion movie (scroll about 3/4 down)] It apparently works a little like [|this] [|and a high level dissertation] So, it's a nice toy, but might be hard for a 6th grade topic. Perhaps you have a related topic, or some other ideas?
 * A:** Yes, that's a tough topic - fun toy though. Typically you would try all kinds of diffeent words like "simple explanation" instead of "science of", but in this case there's so many toy sellers and so few real studies of of it that you may want to look for another idea. In addition, the physics of this toy are anything but kid friendly. Here's on explanation: [|chatter ring toy]

//Guys- in thinking about it, if you could find a way to put the big ring on a motor to turn it around, and then change the speed, you could have a great experiment - finding the best speed to keep the rings going the longest time, etc.//

As I told you before, Jason Solano, Nick Ingram, Ivan del Castillo, and I, Daniel Houston are experimenting with paper helicopters, and our question is " With introduced variables, which paper helicopters will produce the most hang time?" We are having some trouble finding good sources to answer our questions on the background research plan worksheet because googling search words like "paper helicopter experiment" or "science behind paper helicopter" mostly results in craft pages and other pages that are not useful. We did look up some stuff about air resistance and gravity, which we know are interrelated with our topic, but it is not enough. Do you have any suggestions?
 * Q**: Hi Mr. Woodward.

**A:** I think that’s a great idea – you can change the wing angle, size, tilt or something in small increments and time the fall. You might want to experiment with combining aluminum foil with paper to get a copter that stays in the exact position you set it at.

Finding science related to the paper helicopter is difficult indeed. Perhaps learning the basics of flight is a good start.

This has a brief introduction: []

This site has good primer on drag: []

You might want to investigate helicopters in general too, here’s one sample: []

Here are some basics you probably have already seen: []

Hope these help, keep writing your ideas and I'll keep checking here!