Cinema (English)
30-60 min
Ages 8+
What Will You Make?
We will build a conveyor belt cinema, and learn the concepts of speed and acceleration.
What Will You Learn?
We will explore the concepts of movement, trajectory, displacement, distance, time, speed, velocity and acceleration.
Gather your materials...let's get started!
Prep the box
Step 1
We cut the top of the box.
Step 2
With the tack, we make two holes on each side of the sides of the box with a separation of approximately 15 cm. Let’s widen the holes with scissors so that the wooden stick can enter.
Build moveable mechanism
Step 3
We traced the end of a toilet paper tube onto a piece of thick cardboard 4 times. Then we cut out each circle.
Step 4
We make a hole in the center of each of the circles just big enough for the wooden stick to go through.
Step 5
Hot glue the circles to the ends of each of the tubes. When dry, gently push the wooden stick through each tube.
Step 6
Hot glue the wooden stick to each end of the cardboard tube so that both the wooden stick and the tube rotate together as one.
Step 7
We insert each end of both of the sticks into the holes opposite each other in the box.
Make your moving background
Step 8
Cut white paper 30 to 40 cm long and the width of your box, we will make a drawing from our house to school. We put it around the tubes and glue the ends of the paper. The paper should be as tight as possible.
Add a character
Step 9
Draw yourself on a bike, skating or walking, cut it out and glue it to one end of the tip of your clip and place it in the center of your box, making it stationary.
Clever! We have it finished and it works perfectly.
Final Cinema Samples
Resources
Media
What Is Happening Here?
Movement, trajectory, displacement, distance, time, speed, velocity and acceleration
The background has a movement, which is the change in position of one object with respect to another, in this case it is our character and the background.
A trajectory of our background is generated. What is the path that is followed during the movement. A displacement is the length in a straight line that joins the start and end points of the movement and is represented by a vector and the distance is defined as the length of the entire path followed by the moving body; which is the distance traveled by our character.
We must also understand the concept of time in our project. What is the duration of an event; that is, the time elapsed between the initial and final positions of a movement, for example when we start and finish rotating our paper. Speed is the distance traveled divided by the time elapsed during the movement of an object and this helps us to the idea of speed that is a vector whose magnitude is speed, which has a direction and sense. Like our background that takes our character from home to school.
And finally there is the concept of acceleration is the final speed minus the initial speed between the elapsed time and we can see it in our project when we turn with more force our paper accelerates.
What's Next?
Create more complex sequences with our cinema, managing to tell a bigger and more interesting story, we can also experiment with other mechanisms with cardboard to learn more about physics.
Try these projects
Both of these projects, featured in Make, also focus on movement and animation. They are easy and fun for all ages.
About MoonMakers
MoonMakers — led by Camila and Diego Luna — are a community of creators passionate about knowledge. A Makerspace, an open space with different digital manufacturing machines. And a YouTube channel where we promote science, technology and the maker movement.
MoonMakers have collaborated with companies such as: Sesame Street, Make Community and in Mexico with Educational Television and Fundación Televisa, creating educational content.
We have given workshops throughout the Mexican Republic with: Talent Land, Secretary of Education in Jalisco, Conacyt, Centro Cultural España.
Materials:
- Shoe box (or similar)
- 2 tubes of toilet paper
- 2 wooden sticks of 30 cm
- Cardboard
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Glue gun
- thumbtacks
- Tape or glue
- Colors
- Ruler
- paper clip
- Paper
