Smash Day!

20-09-2017, 11:53 AM
Have you ever wondered what smashing a watermelon in slow motion would look like? What about a Kinder Surprise Egg? What about milk, lego, or even a real egg? This list grew longer and longer as Emma, Nathan and other children started brainstorming these hypothetical questions.  I love sitting and chatting with the children about crazy and wonderful ideas, however, this time we were so inspired we vowed to make it happen.  It was here, at a typical OSC table, that we created the idea of Smash Day.

In order for Smash Day to work we first needed a list of items.  Even though we had some initial ideas we wanted to talk more about why we were picking each items and what were the pros and cons of the items we wanted.  Our main goal was to find a balance between science, fun and minimal waste.  We quickly revived our list to include the following:
  • Watermelon (mini)
  • Kinder egg
  • Egg (expired) 
  • Water balloon
  • Lego
  • Pie (crust + whipped cream)
  • Apple
  • Milk (small container) 
  • Mentose and coke (mini can)
  • Cup of coffee ( Carolyn's) 

Our next step was to organize a safe, easy way to clean up our proposed mess.  Luckily, we had an old tarp on the way out that would take care of the mess for us.  Soon we were hyping up Smash Day to everyone, from kids to leaders.  Wednesday couldn't get here soon enough.

On Wednesday afternoon everyone jumped into action and helped set up the final phase of our project.  Sarah organized the items into a smashtastic order.  Brianna set up the ladder and found us an optimal smashing space.  Kevin set up the tri pod and slow mo camera and I set up our observation board.  I checked in with our planning crew and we agreed we wanted 3 questions answered.

  1. How high did it bounce?
  2. What did the item look like after it was smashed? Was it close to the original shape or not?
  3. How close did it land on the target?
As everything was being organized we split everyone into groups and handed out observation sheets.  Before anything was smashed we all took a moment to predict the outcomes.  I noticed that the phrase "a thousand pieces" was used quite a lot for question 2. 

Soon the excitement bubbled over as I announced it was time to drop the first item, a banana.  The silence after the banana landed was strange.  There was a sudden feel of disappointment.  The banana drop was a flop.  However, soon water balloons, mini pies and even my cup of coffee were splashing onto the tarp (and Kevin, Sorry!)  which filled the group with excitement once again. 

For me the highlight of our experiment was the mini watermelon.  The slow motion video was by far my favorite, and unfortunately the last because my phone ran out of storage. 

After the last bit of chocolate milk was cleaned, the observations recorded, and the videos compiled and am left feeling very satisfied.  I look forward to the next time we take a wonderful, creative, and crazy idea and smash it, figuratively and maybe literally.  Tune in to find out!

WRCC
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