Activity 1: Floating Wood
Combining with the information above (the use of wood for canoes), an activity that could be used for further discovery with wood is an activity to determine which wood floats better.
For this activity, teachers would need to fill a sink or a container with water. In addition, it would be imperative to have a variety of different kinds of wood to use to experiment, ideally all cut to the same size. Students could then put the blocks in the water very carefully and then mark the line where the water rises to on the block of wood. From here they can determine which wood floats better and would (possibly) make a better boat.
In addition to this activity, you could first get the students to weigh the blocks of wood to see if the weight of the wood corresponds with how much the wood floats. This would test their numerical skills and have the students comparing numbers between the different weights of the woods.
Some woods that would be good to use for this activity would be poplar, balsa, beech, oak, teak, pine, and/or spruce. In addition, this activity can be modified for older grades by talking about density, displacement of water, calculating area or volume, etc.
For this activity, teachers would need to fill a sink or a container with water. In addition, it would be imperative to have a variety of different kinds of wood to use to experiment, ideally all cut to the same size. Students could then put the blocks in the water very carefully and then mark the line where the water rises to on the block of wood. From here they can determine which wood floats better and would (possibly) make a better boat.
In addition to this activity, you could first get the students to weigh the blocks of wood to see if the weight of the wood corresponds with how much the wood floats. This would test their numerical skills and have the students comparing numbers between the different weights of the woods.
Some woods that would be good to use for this activity would be poplar, balsa, beech, oak, teak, pine, and/or spruce. In addition, this activity can be modified for older grades by talking about density, displacement of water, calculating area or volume, etc.