Ready, Set, Roll! Is Back: Build Your Own Roller Coaster at Home

30 01 2012

Have you ever watched skiers going down their track, or gone so fast down a slide that you never thought that you would stop?

With the welcome return of the Ready, Set, Roll exhibit, we thought that we should investigate how you could create your own working track from materials that can be found in your own home.

What you will need:

-Tubing for example: Toilet paper roll, wrapping paper tubes, insulation tubes

-A variety of balls (sizes and weights)

-Tape

Extras:

-Cups

-Books (used to raise height)

We had fun experimenting with different tubes to see how crazy our roller coaster could get! Check it out:

First we built a simple ramp (like a ski jump). The aim of this track is to allow the ball to pick up as much speed (acceleration) while it is traveling down the ramp and finally to land in one of the cups at the bottom.

From this we then tried the same ramp with different balls of different sizes and weights. Would the different sizes/ weights of the balls make a difference?

The image below shows a more advanced track, this time including a loop in the middle. In order to make it around the loop, your ball needs to gain enough velocity. What can you do to make sure your ball builds enough speed to conquer the Loop d’Loop?


To add an obstacle to your track, try adding a jump to see if your ball can make it across the gap.

For our jump, we used paper cups to hold up the track. Do you think you could make a wider gap for your roller coaster?

Finally, you can add a spiral cone to catch the ball in at the end of your track! It is very easy to make–Just draw a circle on a piece of paper, then either cut out a circle or have an adult do it for you. Next, you tape both of the sides together and add your finishing touch to the track!

You can make your roller coaster as long, loopy, or extreme as you want! See how adventurous you can get.

Once you’ve created your own coaster, you can try out ours at the Museum!





Make a Banjo Box

28 11 2011

A banjo is a string instrument, it produces music by vibrating strings. Banjos are normally played by plucking the strings, but strumming (running your fingers along the strings instead of grabbing and pulling them) creates sound too. Sound is made by the vibrations that send sound waves through the air. When you pluck the strings, they vibrate and make sound waves that reach your ear.

You can make your own musical instrument, just follow the instructions below for our banjo box!

Instead of strings we used rubber bands. You’ll notice the thinner rubber bands make a higher note. Why is this? It’s because the thinner the band the faster it vibrates, making a higher pitch. The thicker band vibrates slower, producing a lower note. Our banjo box is a million times easier to make than an actual banjo, and just as much fun!

All you need is:

  • An old box (we used a left-over soap box because it was small)
  • Rubber bands of different thickness
  • 2 Pencils, pens or markers (to raise the rubber bands from the box)

Just wrap the rubber bands around the box and slide the pencils under the bands to raise them, then you’re done! Wasn’t that easy? See how ours turned out:

We had a lot of fun playing our creative instrument. You can make instruments out of all sorts of found objects. This guy made a banjo with an old cigar box!

We admit he’s a little better at playing it than we are with our banjo box…





Woodcrafting 101

15 11 2011

Want to sew a design on wood? Not the usual material thought of for needle and thread, however the Museum’s Woodcrafting 101 activity brought us a crafty combination. Three stations were set up for each step of the process; marking a design, drilling the holes, and putting yarn in the wood plaque. Under the supervision of Gallery Educators, kids got to use stencils, power drills, needles, and thread to make a sewn wood piece.

At the first table, kids got to choose from pre-made stencils of stars, hearts, and houses (even a rocket ship!) for their design. Using markers, the “picture” was redrawn on the wood plaque, but only looked like random dots.

Parents and kids choosing a template and wood piece to start!

Those random dots came in handy while using the power drills at the next station. Hand drills and power drills (with adult supervision) were used to make holes through wood plaques. Proper safety was explained, such as using goggles and clamping the wood plaques to the table.

Gallery Manager, Matt Brown showing a woodcrafter how to clamp to the table.

Under the hands-on guidance of Gallery Educators, kids got to use power drills and learn how to correctly hold the drill and change the direction of the drill bit to make all the holes for the final step.

Matt Brown helping kids use the ‘big’ power drill.

Gallery Educator, Jennifer Himstedt, helping kids use the electric power drill.

At the last station, a little sanding was used to smooth out the wood plaque. The original pictures were redrawn with different colors of yarn sewn through the holes. Examples were used, but kids had amazing ideas to add colors and make each wood piece an original creation!

Kids sewing the final touches to their creations!

Woodcrafting 101 will be an ongoing program to give kids a hands-on experience working with wood tools and crafts. Gallery Manager and Woodcrafting 101 creator, Matt Brown has been setting up the program and has new ideas for ACM’s new program!  New ideas are in the works and all ages are invited to join with adult supervision! The next Woodcrafting 101 will be on December 3, 2011 at ACM.

If you have adult supervision, a power drill (or hand drill), needle and thread at home: continue reading this post for step-by-step instructions on how to make a wood plaque of your own.

Read the rest of this entry »





I-Spy…

13 10 2011

with my little eye… A FUN CRAFT!

Have you ever been bored on a road trip? Then you’ve probably played the I-Spy game. I-Spy is a guessing game, sometimes played in cars, where the fun is in the observation. There are many variations of the game, and right now at ACM, our newest favorite is the I-Spy Bottle. This fun craft is extremely easy to make and the possibilities of I-Spy combinations are endless!

Here’s the first one we made using random objects, an old water bottle, and plain white rice:

Some tips for making the bottle:

  • Gather items that you know will fit through the opening of the bottle
  • Use a funnel or make a paper one, so the filler (the rice) doesn’t spill
  • Try to add the filler and the objects in increments so the objects don’t all lump together
  • You can hot glue gun the top of the bottle if you want to avoid the contents spilling out in the excitement of I-Spying

You can make all sorts of themes with your I-Spy Bottles, use shells for an ocean theme, or creepy objects for a Halloween one. You can even vary the types of fillers you use: rice, pasta, beans, birdseed, lentils, beads, sand… it all works.

If you want to add another fun step in your I-Spy Bottle creation, try dyeing the filler you use, Momtastic has a great tutorial for coloring rice (it works on beans, pasta, and lentils too!) maybe you could make a rainbow themed bottle?

We even made a Dino-Spy Bottle in honor of our exhibit Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice! Check it out:

We used assorted beans to represent soil. It looks like the tiny triceratops is being excavated from the rocky remains!

Tell us how your bottles turned out, what theme did you choose?





Gravity Well

12 09 2011

Watch the coin orbit!

The Gravity Well here at The Austin Children’s Museum teaches us about energy. When the coin drops lower into the well some of its gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. As the coin drops down it has higher velocity. Also, the coin goes around in smaller circles the lower it gets. So you can see how the coin completes orbits much faster near the center of the well, just like a planet would orbiting around the sun!

Make your own gravity well:

What you need:

  • large piece of paper
  • pencil
  • ruler
  • scissors
  • various balls
  • tape
  • paper tube

Experiment with balls or marbles of all shapes and sizes and send us your results. Do the heavier ones travel faster? What about the smaller ones?

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Send us your pics of your homemade gravity wells!





Inspiration to All

27 06 2011

Our mission here at the Austin Children’s Museum is to create “innovative learning experiences for children and families that equip and inspire the next generation of creative problem solvers”.

Wolfgang is a 9-year-old child who attends Barton Hills Elementary School. His 3rd grade class was assigned to build a landmark that they have been to in Austin. Wolfgang chose the Austin Children’s Museum. When asked why he chose the museum Wolfgang expressed that he “really likes to come here” and “has been for many years”. Here are pictures of the model and of the inspired kid who built it:

To build the model, Wolfgang used materials such as sheet rock, cardboard, foam, markers, glue, and paint. He also wrote an essay explaining why he chose to build the Museum and what he is inspired by. If you’d like to read what Wolfgang wrote about us, click here:

Wolfgang’s ACM Model

We were very pleased when this child came to us with pride and told us about his project.  Wolfgang has even been kind enough to let us keep it. If you are interested in seeing the Austin Children’s Museum Model, stop by and ask to see it. Please let us know if you have used the Museum in any papers or school projects. We’d love to find out!





ACM Wishlist

22 06 2011

The Museum is a place that always encourages you to use your hands and brain to create new things. We have a place called Tinkerer’s Workshop where you can work on fun projects. The workshop gives kids the chance to tinker with donated items such as toilet paper rolls, paper, and cardboard.

This summer we have been bursting at the seams with kids getting involved in our camps and coming to the Museum to hang out in our exhibits. The camps also make use of the many donated items such as Styrofoam egg cartons, Popsicle sticks, and plastic containers. Here is the supplies table at the Engineer It! camp:

We are beginning to run out of materials because there have been so many of you building creations in Tinkerer’s Workshop and being a part of our summer camps. The Museum is happy that all of you kids and your parents have joined us and we would love to keep giving you fun things to do. Next time you come to ACM try to bring a few items off our wishlist!

If you’d like to see the list,

Read the rest of this entry »





Zip Line!

4 03 2011

Create a few characters, then send them whizzing down this miniature zip line! We decided to try our hand at Made by Joel’s zip line toy. All you need is a big paper clip, a metal spool, a few smaller paperclips, string, and some paper & pens.

Bend the large paperclip and attach the spool. Draw your characters and sandwich a paperclip between their front & back panels, bending and poking one end of the paperclip through the paper to make a hook above the character’s head.

Bend two more paperclips, then tape them to the wall. Tie each end of a piece of string or fishing line to one of the paperclips. Your zip line is now ready for use. Hook on one of your characters and let it ride!





Refrigerator Fun!

23 02 2011

We made a marble run on our refrigerator!

All you need to make one on your refrigerator is:

  • toilet paper or paper towel tubes (plus scissors to cut them)
  • an empty egg carton
  • a marble
  • magnets

We built a circuit that lights up an LED light into the end of our track. What other cool things can you come up with to include?





Engineering Challenge!

18 02 2011

This Saturday, we are celebrating National Engineer Day at the museum. You can celebrate this day with us by participating in an engineering challenge!

Civil engineers design and build big infrastructures like buildings, bridges, tunnels and dams. This takes a lot of work and requires a lot of planning and thinking.

When an engineer builds a bridge, the engineer has to think about all of the people that will be driving on that bridge. The bridge has to support people and cars, so it must be sturdy for safety.

We are challenging you to test the sturdiness of paper in different shapes!

The only supplies you will need are paper, tape and books. We used our paper and tape to design three different shapes. We chose to make a triangle, a cylinder and a square box.

We used old cards to create our shapes.

After we designed our shapes, we tested how sturdy each shape was by placing books on top of them.

The cylinder.

The triangle.

The square box.

We found the cylinder was very sturdy and could hold the most books!

You can also try to use different materials to design your shapes, and you can try to balance different things on top of them.

What did you discover about civil engineering in this challenge? Be sure to let us know!





Mini Marble Machine

16 02 2011

We love this marble machine made out of a cereal box that we spotted at Made By Joel. He has a great tutorial on how to make it! For ours, we cut out multiple holes in the lowest ramp and positioned it at an upward angle—we wanted to see if we could make the marble could fall into the second or third hole instead of the first.

Getting the marble in the second hole was not too hard, but we still haven’t been able to get it in the third hole!





Let the Good Times Roll: Marble Maze

1 02 2011

Ready, Set Roll!, the Museum’s new featured exhibit just opened. Come learn about friction, gravity and energy. You can have fun learning about how objects roll on your own… make this awesome marble maze at home!

Create a marble maze on the inside of a shoebox lid, so the sides will keep the marble from rolling onto the floor. Mark one corner the start and label a hole in the opposite corner finish. In between the start and the finish cut more holes that you want to avoid. Also, use Popsicle sticks, bottle caps, and other recycled goods to create obstacles.

Pick up your maze and shift it to guide the marble to the end. What did you use to make your maze? Leave a comment and let us know.





Marble Races

29 01 2011

Ready, Set Roll! opened at 10 a.m on Saturday! Come on by and see all of our new activities!

In this video, we have some of the staff practicing physics in our new exhibit Ready, Set, Roll!

As you can see, it wasn’t so easy to hit the rotating buckets. Do you think it was the length of the tracks? Was it the height of the starting point? Which track do you think would make the golf ball fall faster?

For a way to test it at home, continue reading! Read the rest of this entry »





Ready, Set, Roll!

28 01 2011

This week we are installing a new exhibit, Ready, Set, Roll! This time, we’re not just borrowing an exhibit from another museum, the talented staff in our shop actually built all of the fun components. Check out these are photos of the exhibit being built in our shop.

This exhibit is meant to help everyone learn more about physics. The components of Ready, Set, Roll! such as The Roller Coaster and The Big U provides hands on experimentation to help us learn about velocity, friction and energy.  Learn more about these words after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »





Ring in the New Year!

3 01 2011

Happy New Year’s! Celebrate the new year by Making this simple noise maker. Take a paper plate and fold it in half. Next, decorate it. I used pipe cleaners, old wrapping paper, and markers. Put beans or beads inside and seal the plate with glue. I added tape to the corners, to keep the beans inside.

Shake your new creation to celebrate the new year! Does you family have any New Year’s Eve traditions? Leave a comment telling us about them.








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