What are forces?

Over the last few weeks, Year 5 have been looking at a number of different forces and have carried out a variety of investigations.  We started by learning about gravity and carried out an investigation to see which objects fell to the ground quicker.  We had some very interesting results, including a few unexpected ones!  The following week, we investigated air resistance by timing ourselves whilst we ran the length of the playground with and without a big bin bag.  We found that, in general, running with the bin bag was more difficult and the air resistance on the bag slowed us down. A few children, however, ran faster with the bag and we had to have a good think about why that was!  We finished our investigations by making our own boats to carry our precious cargo (golf balls!).  We really though about the design of our boats and there were lots of different designs.  As you can imagine, some floated and some let our cargo fall into the water!  We really enjoyed our investigations and being scientists!