Two Helpers at the Kitchen Apron Cubby

Investigation at the Apron Cubby

A fifth-grade cooking club investigated two helpers stored beside the kitchen apron cubby: an empty cloth oven mitt and a soft silicone pot holder. The objects had different shapes and were made of different materials. Students asked whether those differences, or the way an object was held, would change the direction it began moving after release. They called Earth's pull on objects gravity.

Step 1: With the cooking equipment off and cool, an adult cleared a space beside the cubby. The club placed a wide padded mat on the floor. The room had no noticeable breeze. The adult marked a point 30 centimeters directly above the mat's center. Students watched from the side and used the same release point, mat, and release method throughout the tests.

Step 2: A student held the mitt flat at the marked point, with its broad face facing the floor. The student opened the supporting hands and moved them aside without pushing the mitt. Students recorded its first movement as toward the mat, sideways, or away from the mat. They repeated this release four times. Then they tested the pot holder flat in the same way for four trials.

Step 3: Students turned each object so its broad face was upright, like a book standing on its bottom edge. They repeated four releases with the upright mitt and four with the upright pot holder. They recorded the first movement, not how an object twisted later. They did not use a timer or compare which object reached the mat sooner.

Step 4: The club made two additional kinds of observations. First, a student kept a hand beneath each object for four seconds. Both objects stayed in place. Next, the student lifted each object slowly from the mat toward the marked point. Both objects moved upward with the hand. Students kept these supported and lifted observations separate from the release records below.