OLYMPICS

       

The official site of the 2002 Winter Olympics is:  http://www.saltlake2002.com/x/f/frame.htm?u=/news/slocmain_front.asp
 

The flag of the Olympics has five interlocking rings (blue, yellow, black, green, and red) on a white ground. The rings represent the five parts of the world that were joined together in the Olympic movement: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe. The motto of the Olympic Games is "Citius, altius, fortius" (meaning "Faster, higher, stronger" in Latin).

 
The 2002 Winter Olympic Games will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The opening ceremonies will be on February 8, 2002. The closing ceremonies will be on February 24, 2002.  The events in the Winter Olympics include: ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, snowboarding, luge, bobsleigh, skeleton (a type of sledding), curling, cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing, slalom, downhill (Alpine) skiing, ski jumping, Nordic combined (skiing plus ski jumping), and biathlon (skiing and shooting).

Try this fun activity to test your knowledge of the Olympics: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/classroom/quiz/olympics.shtml  

 

Check out everything we learned about Bobsledding

 

 

Then we did a fun experiment called Slip Sliding Sleds from January 2002 AIMS magazine. 

Purpose: To find out what kind of materials would work best for the runners on our model sleds for our Olympic Sled Race.

Hypothesis: Twelve students predicted that the plastic straw runners would be the fastest, two predicted the wood craft sticks would win, five chose the metal paper clips, and one picked the pipe cleaner runners.

Procedure:  Each of our four groups did 3 runs on our bobsled run-cookie sheet of ice.

Results & Conclusion: In three of the four groups the metal paper clip sleds won the most races while one group found the plastic straw runner sleds were the champions.   Our combined results showed the metal as the winner which fit with what we read about bobsleds having steel runners.  The straw runners came in second and worked the best all of the time.  We had a problem with the metal paper clips sticking as the ice melted.  The wood came in second.  That is what the original bobsleds had for runners.  The pipe cleaner sleds just kind of sat there and wouldn't go unless we pushed them and then they would stop and not even get to the bottom.  Here are some pictures of our slip sliding sleds.

 

Another friend visits us from Wenzel School in Sturgis, Michigan 

Our visitor from Phil Campbell Elementary in Phil Campbell, Alabama

        A flat friend visits from Valley View Elementary in Pleasanton, California

 

 "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well." Olympic Creed