There's been quite a bit of press about how it is being banned in schools and how teachers find it annoying. Do I find it annoying? Yes. Do I think it should be banned at school? No. It's a fun activity students enjoy. Why squelch it?
On the flip side, some teachers automatically looked for a way to incorporate bottle flipping into their classrooms. Dan Meyer wrote about his attempt at this here. I left my thoughts in his comments about how I struggled with the idea of teachers trying to take everything that is fun for students and incorporating it into school. I wasn't going to touch bottle flipping....I was going to leave it fun for the kids.
Well, after following all of the twitter conversations and Jon Orr's blog post (Flippity Flip, Bottle Flip!) I decided to give it a shot....and what better day to flip bottles than the day after a Monday Halloween?
I started by showing the following video. (Note: There is an f-bomb that needs to be muted at about 2:08)
- How much water needs to be in the bottle to flip it?
- Does the size of the bottle matter?
- How high are the flips?
- How many times does the bottle flip around based on the height of the flip?
- What is the probability of the last flip in the video actually happening?
- How many flips can you land per minute? (This one was from my 6th grade class. I asked them what rates they could find from the video.)
- What's the angle of your wrist when filpping?
How Much Water is Best?
- One student suggested we use straws to drink out the water...that keeps the water bottle upright to more easily view the water level.
- I went back and forth on whether to measure height of the water level or volume of water. Due to the curve of the top of the water bottle, the 10% increments of height doesn't equal the same increments in volume. I"m unsure which way is best, but since most kids aren't going to have measuring cups with them when they're flipping, I suppose the way we did it is fine.
- There are definitely environmental implications to this activity. I was sure to have students share water bottles and we recycled them after. I think having a discussion with your students about decreasing their footprint is a good idea here.
Who's the Best Flipper?
A few questions came up that we might try to answer later in the year:
- Is the best percent filled line the same for any sized water bottle?
- Do different people's flip styles have any affect on the water level that works best?
- Some students asked for a new bottle after the bottoms of theirs started wearing down. They said the bottle wouldn't land as well. However, I was observing that used water bottles seemed to land better than new ones. Could be something to test!