Our new topic for science in Year 5 is forces.

Our subject vision for science is:

Be academic. Be curious. Be practical. 

We have certainly had fun being practical this week!

We started the topic by recapping previous knowledge and what forces we remembered. 

We then moved on to focus on the force of friction. Children were reminded that friction is the force that 'always opposes the direction of an object's movement'. From this we looked at different surfaces and the effect the surface can have when we move on them, e.g. carpet compared to a smooth surface.

We identified that rough surfaces caused more friction and allowed objects to slow down. From this, we identified different scenarios where more friction would be beneficial, e.g. a car breaking and when less friction is beneficial e.g. ice skating. 

To further our knowledge, we tested it. Using jelly cubes, we put them on a plate and tried to pick them up. 

 

We then added oil to the jelly cubes causing less friction.

Children found that with the jelly cubes with the oil were harder to pick up. This linked well to one of our examples of using oil for less friction in an engine to allow moving parts to slide past one another with ease avoiding wear and tear. 

 

We look forward to learning about the effect of air resistance in our next science lesson!