This week we are learning about levers. Levers make hard tasks much easier. For example, a wheel barrow. With a wheel barrow you can transport objects or even liquids in large amounts at a time. Without a wheel barrow it would take a lot longer and it would be a lot harder to move all those objects. There are three different parts of a lever. The fulcrum, effort and load. Let’s use a wheel barrow for an example. The load is what you are trying to move. So in a wheel barrow’s case, the load would be whatever is in that big bucket. The effort is where something or someone is making the contraption move. Again, in a wheel barrow’s case, the effort would be where you are holding on to and pushing the handles. Lastly, the fulcrum is the pivot point that doesn’t go up or down, it just pivots everything around it. So, in a wheel barrow, the fulcrum would be the wheel. Those are the parts of a lever! I think that levers are very interesting but also complicated, so they are fun to learn about, but its a challenge!

Last week we watched a video about automatons. They are pretty cool, but some are a little creepy. They were first displayed publicly for everyone to see, on a clock tower. But later on, a lot of them became private so that only wealthier people and people of a higher class could see them. These machines covered peoples gardens and homes. There was one specific automaton in a wealthy persons home, a royal family. This automaton was supposed to represent a perfect city, with each person doing their job. In this city, the people of lower class and regular class did all the hard work while the royals and people of a higher class sat back, relaxed, and watched. This doesn’t seem right, but this is how the automaton was made. Automatons use clockwork to run. This means that the machinery running them is much like the machinery used in clocks. Overall, the video was very interesting and taught me a lot about automatons. I think that automatons are pretty cool, and you might want to try learning about them!