Nut Drop

PIRA: 1C30.10

Overview:

Gravitational acceleration is shown by dropping a string with nuts tied to it. The nuts on one string are spaced out evenly, while the other has the nuts tied at increasingly longer distances from each other.

Materials:

Nut drop strings, metal plate

Setup:

Put the metal plate on the ground so that students are able to hear the nuts hit the floor more easily. Unravel strings from rod and place them so they don't get tangled.

How to:

Hold the string with evenly spaced nuts just over the metal plate, and inform the students to pay attention to the interval between nuts hitting the plate. Release the string. Repeat with string with different lengths between nuts. Make sure that the shortest distance between the nuts are lowest to the ground.

Safety:

Do not swing strings around, especially close to students and fragile objects.