Monday 15 February 2010

Measuring Paper Strengths

Monday, February 15th, 2010
Yesterday was the Chinese New Year.

It is the year of the tiger.

We talked about New Year's Celebrations in China. We found out that most of us are sheep (2003) or Monkeys (2004). We found out what kind of people we are. We also found out about tigers, and about Chinese inventions such as paper, printing, fireworks, gunpowder, compasses and hot air balloons. We were curious about how strong paper is, and if every type of paper is as strong as all other types. Teacher cut out strips of different kinds of paper that we have in the classroom, and we had to guess the order of the paper in order from strongest to weakest. Most of us guessed that the purple tissue paper is the strongest, maybe because it is the darkest. It turned out not to be so. Teacher made a little bucket for the test, out of a yoghurt pot, a paper clip and some string. To be fair each piece of paper was the same size, and had a hole punched in the same place as the others. We attached this bucket to the piece of paper for testing, guessed first, then added marbles to see at what point the paper would tear. We enjoyed the counting and testing. We were really really surprised at how strong an ordinary (recycled) piece of A4 photocopying card was. We hadn't enough marbles to get a result on this one. Here are the results:

No comments: