Tuesday, March 2, 2021

The Scientific Sock Kite

 It was very windy out today, and Anna wanted to fly a kite.  I recalled that the former owners of our house left a kite in the storage room . . .


. . . so we decided to take it for a test flight.  It was a flimsy little kite that twirled erratically . . .


. . . and crashed a lot.


As I tried to tame it during one of its short, chaotic flights, it wrapped its string around my glove and yanked it off!


Anna suggested that it might fly more steadily if we added a tail, so we pinned one of Joy's socks (which she thoughtfully leaves lying around the family room, for just such a time as this) to the bottom.  That helped a little, but the kit still wobbled a lot, and the big sock was obviously weighing it down too much.


Next, we tried pinning two of Anna's little socks to the kite wings.  We even got out a ruler, to make sure the weight was spaced evenly.


Success!  Our kite now flies longer and steadier, and it doesn't steal my gloves.  I told Anna that was our homeschool science lesson for the day, because we tested hypotheses until we found a solution.  Plus, we measured stuff.  That's totally sciencey.

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