Magnet Strength

On Friday, I posed a question to the class - How could we test the strength of a magnet's attraction? I handed out materials to each science team, and I asked them to design an experiment that would answer this question. The teams began brainstorming and trying out various experiment designs. Justin, Jonathan, Madison and Virginia quickly came up with a really great idea. They showed it to the class, and everyone quickly began designing similar experiments. Here's some pictures of them working:

Here's Atticus' notebook entry where he describes the set-up of the experiment

After finding out the strength of our magnets, we posed a new problem - How does space affect the strength of a magnet's attraction. We began by adding a plastic spacer between the two magnets and conducting our experiment again. We added two spacers, three, spacers..all the way to six. After adding each spacer we tested the strength of the magnets. We found that space DOES make a difference. As the space increases between the magnets, the strength of the attraction decreases between the two. It was a fascinating experiment!