Pop Fly Challenge

Today Alysen and I did something called the Pop Fly Challenge, from PBS Kids DESIGN SQUAD that features science and technology based projects that Judy and Adam put together.

The Pop Fly Challenge is a thing where you build a design to launch ping pong balls high enough to catch.We even caught the launched ping-pong ball in a cup.

Our launcher was a paint stirrer on top of a paper cup.The paint stirrer had a ping-pong ball on one end and nothing on the other so it looked sort of like a see-saw. At one end of the paint stirrer there was a little piece of paper. We would lean the ping pong ball on the paper then hit the other end of the paint stirrer and the ping pong ball would go flying.

At first the paint stirrer was laying on the cup when we launched it and Alysen caught it. Then we pushed the paint stirrer up a little more, it went even higher. When we finally pushed it to the highest point, the ping pong ball whacked the ceiling and I caught it.

You could try the pop fly challenge and tons of other cool experiments at the PBS Kids DESIGN SQUAD website.

On October 22nd, Adam and Judy from the Design Squad are coming in to Hillwood to talk to us and see our experiments! We will be interviewing them about their work and their experiments.

The picture above to the left is Adam and Judy's launcher. The picture to the right is mine and Alysen's launcher.

The above is a video of the Pop Fly Challenge.