Today my class was doing a design experiment with a plastic ruler as the theme. This normally gives rise to a variety of research questions of which several are always related to twanging the ruler on the side of the bench. Today Bakhita came up with a very interesting observation. Why is it that if you hold the ruler in your hand and twang it the ruler doesn't vibrate but if you hold it on the table it does. I gave it a go and no matter how hard I held it I couldn't get it to twang in my hand. I think it's because its not possible to hold your hand still enough so when you twang the ruler the hand moves instead. We tested the theory by holding my hand tightly against the edge of my table while holding the ruler and achieved a mild twang. It would be interesting to try varying the mass of the holder to see if the amount of energy transfered to the "hand" is related to its mass, this would involve things we don't have in the lab so the research was abandoned. I'm not sure why Lamis (in the background) is praticing Flemings Left hand rule but then agian why not. Reminds me that I havent checked how many people have disliked my flemings Left hand video on youtube lately.

Hmm 21 dislikes out of 8,958 views.

The hand was drawn using a programme called Teddy which turns 2D drawings into 3D objects. My idea was to make a 3D hand that I could use on the smart board. Didn't really work so I'm stuck with my real one