Whirly+Bird+Unit

=__Whirly and Twirly Bird Journal - 5th Grade Science Class__= =February 28th-March 1st= =We are starting a whirly bird unit in class today by working with twirly birds. Twirly birds are a rectanglar piece of paper. I've enclosed a picture of one so you know what they look like. We are testing different variables including weight, paper, and design among others. The variable of weight is putting paper clips, tape, and other items onto the wings, body, and the bottom of the twirly bird. The variable of paper is seeing whether regular paper, construction paper, and wax paper work and which one works best. We are also working with other materials like kleenexes or aluminum foil.=

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Today we took pictures of some of the variables and a picture of it in mid. air. The variables we worked with are buttons, bull clips, paper clips, and different materials.
=March 2, 2011= =Today we tested different types of paper again and we also made twirly birds out of a whole piece of a paper and a twirly bird twice as small as the other twirly birds we've made. We also learned that the smaller the twirly bird the more spins. The very large one turns less than the regular-sized twirly birds and a lot less than the twirly bird that is twice as small as the regular-sized twirly bird. Today we tested all of the other ones: paper towels, construction paper, and file paper. The slowest one was waxed paper. The fastest one was the folder paper. We also found that you have to tilt the wings up on the small twirly bird for it to twirl.=

=﻿March 3, 2011= =Today we filled out a paper that had some of the different varibles of twirly birds. We re-tested some of them and started to design our own. Basically we redid our journals on the piece of paper Mrs. Loucks gave us. Over the next week we will be designing our own twirly birds how we want to.=



=﻿Twirly Bird Data-Douglas=

We are going to color the wings and tape them in between the two body parts. The legs are going to be folded at the top and put in between.
=__﻿March 11th__=

The duck twirly bird failed, because it was to heavy for the wings.
=Final Twirly Bird Design- Douglas=

==﻿For my final twirly bird design, I have used a regular twirly bird made of construction paper with wing extensions that are about four inches long. I have found that longer wings make the twirly birds fall a bit slower, and have some pretty good turns. Here are a couple photos of my design.==



If you're wondering what "SFFM" stands for, it stands for "Santa Fe Flying Machine".
=﻿March 11th, 2011= =﻿Today we are testing our twirly birds we designed ourselves. I'm going to talk about the whirly birds we've done the last few days. The first day we tested the number of turns for the rubber band. Once it made it to 3 and 4 turns it didn't keep getting more turns but stayed consistent. The second day we worked with the placing of the stick. The farther down we get the less turns it produces. On the last or nine hole it didn't even get two turns.=

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