The children
last semester were introduced to a wind tunnel – a fan with lamination shaped
like a tunnel over it so they could test out materials to see how they
move. We wanted to get more specific
with the children on the types of materials they could use in it so we brought
out the wind tunnel to use again this semester.
We started off by just putting
feathers in it. We wanted to give
children the opportunity to see how one specific material moved in the wind tunnel. We also wanted the children to be able to use
the feathers as a point of reference so we wanted to make sure we got a good
idea of how they moved in the tunnel before we moved on.
Some
of the children had never seen the wind tunnel before so it was a new
experience for them. Some of the
children were excited to see the feathers get almost to the ceiling while other
children were excited to see how many feathers they could get to float up at
one time.
One little girl in particular was
very interested in how the feather felt in the wind as she held it up above the
tunnel. She stood with the feather
blowing in her hands for several minutes at a time and would smile and giggle
as she felt the wind and feather on her hand.
To expand on this, we want to offer
the children more opportunities with different objects. We wanted to see how styrofoam interacts
with the fan and have the feathers available to the children also to use as a
reference point.
