Atomic World

Well... I did not keep up with these posts over the last few years. Atomic World has been built and torn down, and I've been through at least three other classroom themes.

Welcome to Atomic World! It's dynamic.

When you first enter the park, to the left is the Ferrous Wheel and It's a Particle World a dark ride that takes the rider through the history of the atomic model. The Ferrous Wheel was made out of a small hula hoop, pipe cleaners, and a Dunkin Donuts cup top with duct tape.

             

To the right is Archimedes' Falls, a water ride that illustrates the story of Archimedes' discovery of differences in atomic density. It was made from paper originally, but later in the year it was refreshed and the water was made from a blue bed sheet.

                  

            

Every theme park must have thrill rides. In Atomic World, there is the traditional wooden coaster called The Sound Wave. Guests journey through the world on a sound wave having a wild ride. This was drawn and colored by hand.

The next ride found in Atomic World is Terminal Velocity. It is drop ride. For this ride, I took four Christmas paper tubes and covered them with duct tape. I also took army men to create passengers for the ride. For a fun little joke, I stuck one of the army men to the wall like it had shot out of the ride with a speech bubble saying "Gravityyyy!" Students really enjoyed this little detail.

All theme parks have a nightly fireworks display and so does Atomic World. This was my A test board which said, "Exploding with A's!" It was easy to make with black bulletin board paper and glitter glue pens.

As the school year went on, we add another attraction to Atomic World. This time is was a show in the Mendeleev Theater called "The Amazing Elements". This corresponded with a project that I assigned my students where they had to pick a compound and draw a cartoon representation of them that showed their characteristics. I created an example with sodium fluoride. My student really got into this project and it was neat to see them add to my classroom theme decorations.

 
 

Coming Soon--Atomic World

The first step to creating interesting classroom decorations is an idea. In my last post, I discussed how I came to the idea of creating a theme park in my classroom. From there, I had to decide what attractions this park would have. Of course, each of them alluded to a scientist or scientific principle.

As I planned out my theme park, I thought about the different types of attractions that are commonly found like roller coasters, flume rides, drop towers, shows, and fireworks. Before deciding how each of these types would look, I first created names for them. My roller coaster would be named "The Soundwave" since roller coasters have the look of periodic motion. The flume ride would be "Archimedes' Falls" and the drop tower would become "Terminal Velocity." Instead of Disney's "It's a Small World," I created "It's a Particle World".

Besides brainstorming on paper, I also went straight to Pintrest and my favorite search engine to see what I could find. I had once pinned, as a joke, a ferrous wheel.  This was the first ride that would fill my theme park that had a blueprint. I knew I needed to make a a circle out of paper or maybe a pool noodle. At some point in the summer, I found a small hula hoop on sale at Michael's craft store. I knew then that I could use this to make my ferrous wheel. I already had black pipe cleaners at home and decided to save the top off of a drink from Dunkin Donuts to use for the center wheel. I covered the lid with black duct tape to quickly change its color.

"The Soundwave," which was meant to look like a more traditional wooden roller coaster, was the first to be made. I searched through many images to find a roller coaster shape that I thought would work. When I found the perfect one, I emailed myself the image and used the projector at work to trace the image onto long white craft paper. For the next four days, any down time I had while watching TV,  I colored the roller coaster using blue Sharpies. I went through at least three Sharpies to complete the whole coaster. Because the Sharpies began to run out of ink at different intervals throughout the process, there were patches of darker blue and lighter blue. When the project was completed, these looked like shadows and gave depth to the image. After coloring the basic roller coaster grid, I then added a few cars full of people. On the cars, I used silver glitter pens to create a sound wave design.

And so the construction of Atomic World began and will continue in the next post.