When Newton Meets Grip Tape
CES Students Use Physics to Build and Ride Skateboards
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Swan Agency Real Estate.
BAR HARBOR—Late May isn’t the time you usually expect eighth graders to be excited about something at grade school.
Things are winding down, said Conners Emerson teacher Lynn Hanna.
Kids are getting excited or nervous or scared about summer, about high school, about big changes ahead and they are finishing a lot of things.
“As an ending project I wanted to do something hands on and integrated into activities students do at school,” Hanna said. “When I heard that Pemetic students were making guitars, I wanted to do something with the CES students, but making guitars wasn’t my thing.”
So she had to start thinking. If guitars weren’t her thing, what was? Creating guitars is engineering. It’s science mixed with math mixed with physics mixed with engineering.
“I have a teacher friend who teaches out of RSU 19 and he mentioned his brother had skateboard frames,” she said.
Skateboards?
They are more Hanna’s thing and that enthusiasm quickly spread to the school administration.
“When I heard this, I went straight to Mr. Fournier and asked what he thought and he was full on board,” she said of the vice principal.
The project? It was a go.
“Students have been using jig saws to cut out the frames with the help of parent and grandparent volunteers,” Hanna said.
They’ve been sanding the boards and painting the boards.
“Students are using MDI’s latest laser technology to design their own emblem,” she said.
With MDI IT lead Lou Jones-Rodriguez, the eighth graders laser their emblem onto the back of their skateboards.
Next, students varnish their boards, putting trucks, wheels, and grip tape onto them. Skateboards have trucks, decks, wheels, wheel bearings. The mechanics behind all that is science.
It sounds like fun, but it also sounds like science creating classroom experience that goes beyond a text book and into something tangible, something they can hold in their hands, something they can ride.
“Students just finished up a unit in science on force and motion, learning about Newton’s three laws of motion where we used Phet simulations using skateboards,” Hanna said.
Those laws create classical mechanics’ foundation.
Skateboard is physics in motion. Turning dynamics, amp engineering, the engineering of the boards themselves. It’s all learning. It’s problem solving. It’s using their analytical skills.
Those skills happen even in the spraying of the boards, in just the understanding of velocity, of cause and effect in action.
“It’ll splatter!” one students said Tuesday as they sprayed a board. “Get closer so it doesn’t splatter.”
“What if I want it to splatter?” another one said. “Maybe I should back up.”
“No!” they laughed. “No!”
In physical education class Helen Jolley received a grant where a trailer of skateboards, helmets, and pads are coming to CES for a two-week PE activity where students learn how to skateboard.
“We get the skateboards from First Push Syndicate, a non-profit that supports skateboarding lessons in schools through its Get On Board program,” Hanna said. “They give us training, a curriculum, and gear rentals for $1/student for the two weeks.”
The only other costs are hairnets for the helmets and a mileage fee for them to deliver and pick up the gear. It costs approximately $500-$600 a year to get all the students on a board for thee or four lessons.
“And it's so worth it. We see their sense of confidence growing by the minute as they discover that with a little instruction and some perseverance, they actually can skateboard,” Hanna said. “The goal is for the eighth grade students to use their own skateboards they have created this year.”
Unless otherwise stated, all photos: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story
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