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Inverted Foucault Pendulum
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In this demonstration, learners explore a variation of a Foucault pendulum, but upside down.

Exploring Tessellations (Grades 6-8)
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In this activity, learners design unique tiles and make repeating patterns to create tessellations. This activity combines the creativity of an art project with the challenge of solving a puzzle.

Cut-Fold-Staple
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In this activity, learners discover how to rotate a flat shape into the third dimension. Learners draw and cut out a shape that has at least one straight edge on an index card.

Solar Spin
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A group of learners models the Sun shining on the Earth. By rotating the Earth, they demonstrate how the Sun only shines on a portion of the Earth at a time.

Reason for the Seasons
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In this activity (on page 6 of the PDF), learners plot the path of the sun's apparent movement across the sky on two days, with the second day occurring two or three months after the first.

Spinning Tops
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Create your own spinning top, and explore color, shapes and spinning. This activity contains instructions for making your spinning top, and tips on how to design and decorate it.

Rotating String Shapes
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In this group activity, learners make multi-sided polygons with string.

Sky Time: Kinesthetic Astronomy
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Through a series of simple body movements, learners gain insight into the relationship between time and astronomical motions of Earth (rotation about its axis, and orbit around the Sun), and also abou

Bearings for Your Whirligig
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Experiment with friction and make bearings for a whirligig! This activity is a nice introduction to friction and bearings and demonstrates why bearings are useful for spinning.

Why do Hurricanes go Counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere?
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In this kinesthetic activity, learners will play a game with a ball to demonstrate the Coriolis force, which partly explains why hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere rotate counterclockwise.

Crank It Up
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In this engineering activity, learners explore simple machines and then build cardboard automata using cams.

Beyond Dominoes: Polyominoes
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In this activity, learners add squares to paper dominoes to make polyominoes.

Pop Bottle Whirligig
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Learn about friction and kinetic energy with this cool spinning toy.

Tinkering with Tops
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In this activity, learners explore the history, design and motion of spinning tops. Learners work in teams of "engineers" to design and build their own tops out of everyday items.

Spinning Blackboard
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Create beautiful spirals by drawing a straight line. This sounds crazy, but you can with a turntable (a record player or lazy susan), paper, and pen.

Spin Art
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Make your own spin art device using an old record player! Notice patterns and effects the spinning movement has on your work. When finished, post your work to the Spin Art Gallery!

Spinning Cylinder: Make a triangle appear on a spinning wheel
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Spin a short piece of PVC pipe that's been marked up, and watch a triangle appear. Enjoy this optical illusion from the Exploratorium's Science Snack series.