Our regular guest blogger, Joanne Arcand, provides us with ideas for paper challenges.
By Joanne Arcand
We are in the midst of unpacking fifty million boxes following a move (ok, not ‘fifty million’….but we ARE going to be at it all year). Understandable, there is an awful lot of paper around the house, and a couple of bored kids. Once I let them make race cars, and space ships, and solitary confinement spaces out of the moving boxes, and they have covered the walls in their rooms with pictures and drawings and plans for world domination, I tried some paper challenges with them. Paper challenges you ask?
Top four paper challenges:
The Moebius strip
This baffles the kids (and most adults). Make a few strips about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide. Use masking tape to tape one of them into a loop. Use a pencil and start drawing a line starting on one side of the loop and continuing round until you reach the pencil line again. You should have a line on one side of the loop and not on the other. “Duh”, right? Ok, now make another loop, but before you tape it turn one of the ends upside down so that there is a twist in the loop. Start drawing your line until you reach your pencil line again. You should find that this time the line is on the inside AND the outside of the loop, even though you didn’t lift your pencil up while drawing the line. Cool, eh?
Part two of this challenge is to use scissors and cut along the line you drew. The loop without the twist should cut into two loops about the same size. The loop with the twist will cut into one, large loop. The challenge usually takes care of itself at this point: what happens if we add more twists? What happens if we add another line and cut along that one? How big can we make the loop?
Step through the index card
The challenge is to cut a hole in the index card (or sheet of computer paper) large enough to walk through without the hole breaking.
Let them struggle a little. Make tea. It’ll take them a while.
The solution is to cut the card into a spiral, then cut a slit in the spiral which will become the hole you walk through. Make the spiral skinny (which is why I suggested computer paper for the kids).
Balance a pen/eraser/keys between two glasses/boxes/chairs
I learned this trick at a bar ‘back in the day’, but it still works in the classroom. The challenge is to balance an object on a paper bridge between two supports. At home, I used two empty plantpots about four inches (10 centimeters) apart, a sheet of computer paper, and a set of keys. Ask them to balance the keys between the two pots using only the paper to help them.
Let them struggle a little. Make lunch.
The solution is to fold the paper like an accordion. Paper folded this way is much stronger, that’s why corrugated cardboard is in all the moving boxes. Once you do it once, they’ll never forget it…and their friends in later years will wonder why they’re packing index cards to the bars.
Surface tension and a mean trick to play on Daddy
Again with the index cards. This works best as a demonstration outside at first, unless you like wet floors.
Fill a (plastic) glass all the way full with water. Place an index card on top of the water. Quickly invert the glass. Surface tension in the water should keep the index card on the glass so that the water doesn’t leak out.
The mean trick for Daddy: If you put the glass upside down on the table, you can ease the index card out so that it looks like an empty, upside down glass on the table. Then ask one of the kids to sweetly ask daddy to “pass me that glass over there…”
Sploosh!
Remember, life’s an experiment. Keep working at it until you get the results you want.
Joanne Arcand is trying to juggle her role as a math teacher with her other life as mom of twin boys. She lives in Oakville, Ontario.
