Description
This ingenious Wandarama is a toy version of a Van de Graaff machine. Charge it up and watch your tinsel shapes fly!
Science2Life’s Science iT! Activities take everyday life objects, toys and knick-knacks and turns them into fun, innovative science projects.
In this activity Scientific Sue uses Wandarama to explore forces and energy linked to the Van de Graaf Machine in a safe, fun and innovative fashion.
This magical toy is an ingenious, battery-operated, static electricity generator that allows you to float tinsel shapes on a cloud of electrons. Press the button on the Wandarama for a few seconds to generate a static charge.
Drop the tinsel shape onto the stick to quickly transfer the negative charge to the tinsel. Since like charges repel each other, the negatively charged tinsel shape floats above the negatively charged stick.
As you’re learning how to float the tinsel shapes, remember that you don’t have to constantly press the button. Just press the button for a few seconds to build up a static charge. Pressing the button continuously both drains the batteries and lessens the effectiveness of the Wandarama stick.
Scientific Sue demonstrating this magical toy
CONTENTS
- Wandarama
- Book of mylar foils
- Foil dish
- Small bag of biodegradable packing peanuts
- Decoration stickers
Activity and educational notes provided
BATTERIES – not included
Each wand requires 2 x AA alkaline batteries
TEACHING NOTES
Click here to download the PDF document.
HOW DOES THIS MAGICAL TOY WORK?
Housed in the handle of the Wandarama stick there are 2 plastic rollers and an elastic band – a miniature mechanism similar in design to Van de Graaff’s invention. A Van de Graaff Generator consists of a hollow aluminium sphere seated on top of an insulated column that houses a rubber belt moving at high speeds.
The belt draws charges from the roller in the base of the device and deposits it ultimately on the outside of the aluminium sphere.
Depending on the materials the rollers and belt are made from the sphere can be positively or negatively charged. The Wandarama’s design works in a similar way.
This amazing toy makes it possible for you to understand how static charges form, interact with other charged and uncharged objects, and grasp the concept of static electricity and electric force fields in a fun and exciting way.
4 Make the mylar shapes come to life!
Charge the wand and allow one of the mylar shapes to be charged by touching the wand. The mylar shape will immediately repel from the stick due to the repulsion of like charges. If your hand is held near the wand, the mylar will be attracted to your hand because you are neutral.
Once the mylar touches your hand, it will instantly become grounded (Mylar is a conductor), losing its positive charge and become neutral. With the positively-charged wand held in close proximity, the mylar will again be attracted to the wand until it touches the wand becoming positively charged by contact and is repelled from the wand again.
This process repeats causing the shapes to jump back and forth from your hand to the wand. Cool stuff!
Science2Life’s Science iT! activities and programmes
Children love to be engaged in learning, especially through interactive projects that they can really get involved and be hands on with.
Science2Life’s Science iT! activities and programmes are part of our STEAM Academy. The activities use everyday life objects, toys and knick-knacks and turns them into fun, innovative, hands-on experiences designed to encourage children to:
- discover the amazing world of science and engineering
- to perform engaging activities that show how science and engineering is at work in their everyday lives
- to foster a lifelong love of science and engineering
- to give a basic grounding in scientific concepts and scientific thinking
- to increase children’s motivation to learn and
- enhance their perception, creativity and logic.
Hands-on learning is learning by doing.
Children involved in our ‘Science iT!’ activities and programmes are introduced to various STEAM learning methods and activities. Our creative programmes involve learning activities that require active thinking and experimenting to find out how things work. We all know how curious children are about the world around them and how they love using the word ‘why?’
The aim of our activities is to provide optimal learning opportunities that strategically help children grasp mathematics, engineering and science concepts.
With the inclusion of the arts component into STEM it makes it more fun to learn, and more approachable to children.
Art education allows children to learn things in a more open-ended way and make them applicable to real life.
Links to the curriculum
All of Science2Life activities can be used to entertain children – however they have been created with the curriculum in mind, so are perfect activities to generate mesmerizing examples of the topics they can be used to explore.
Plus our Science iT! activities can up scaled-up to be used in workshops within the classroom, for festival and birthday celebrations, which provide opportunities for children to collaborate on initiatives, explorations and creations.
The idea behind our Science iT! activities is to ignite children’s natural innate curiosity about the world around them (and the items in it) and to channel their enthusiasm for scientific discovery as early as possible.
Currently Science2Life have the following Science iT! activities:
- The Magical EVANESCO Spell
- The Magical AMORTENTIA Spell
- The Super Bouncing Bubble Kit
- Make your own Fossil Kit
- Colour Changing Bracelet Kit
- Pneumatic Monsters Activity
- Creative Circuits
- The Magical Wandarama
- Gone Fishing
- The Jitter Bug
Each of the above activities can be turned into a workshop programme! Interested? Give us a call!
Scientificsue@science2life.com
+447970884728
Note: All of Science2Life’s STEAM ACADEMY shows and workshops are designed to not only motivate and fire the spirit of discovery within your children but also ignite curiosity in their minds.
For more information on our shows visit our website: https://www.science2life.com
