Can a student really lift their teacher using a lever?  How were levers  used in medieval warfare?  How can you control force using gears and  pulleys?  Using a twelve foot long lever, three foot tall gears and pulleys, a  catapult, and a hand crank music machine, we demonstrate how all simple  machines help us do work by trading distance for effort.  This is a whole new way to get students excited about simple machines.  A great follow up is the Gearing Up for Speed hands on classroom workshop.

What gear combination do you use to make your car go fast on level ground?  Does that same combination work going up hill?  Do belts and pulleys work better than gears?  Students use gears, belts, and pulleys to build a transmission system for their motor driven cars.  They then test their cars on up hill and down hill slopes, experimenting with different gear combinations, to get the fastest, most efficient car possible for the various conditions.  They learn how different gear combinations are used for different purposes.  Using grade appropriate math skills, the students use the data collected to determine why some gear combinations work better than others.

What are the 3 types of levers?  How did people in the middle ages use levers to make catapults?  What is a trebuchet?    In this workshop students experiment with the three classes of levers and use their knowledge to design their own catapults and they fire away with marshmallows.