Movement & Forces: Towering Cups (INERTIA & GRAVITY)

 

Creating the Tower of Cups is a simple demo of inertia, mass and gravity. The object is to stack cups using a card between each. We tested this out with a few cups to start, before building up our numbers (and never did succeed with this tall of a tower!)

There was loads of room for wiggle and learning. Mr. M decided that the base cup needed a weight to anchor it from tipping. Then he thought more cups could use a weight, so added a few coins to the bottoms. He learned that success was easier when one edge of each card was near the edge of the cup. Also, if you wanted a big tower, you needed lots of hands to take commands!