Balancing the Physics

My daughter is very physics minded, she loves to build things. Minecraft is a favorite and she has learned so much from building things in the game. She builds things with my husband in the garage. So, when I showed her this craft, she kept saying I just don’t understand how that is going to work. It is going to tip over. I was like. . . no it won’t, it balances. The proof was in the picture, right?

 

 

 

Well, she turned out to be right. It tips over. I put my fork right in the center of the saucer and mine tips over more than hers does. She put hers farther across the plate, it still tips over, but not as badly.

 

 

 

After going to the hardware store to look for something to counter weight the dangling cup we ended up at the sports department at Walmart. We found fishing weights that would work.

 

 

 

Due to where my daughter put her fork she only needed two weights to keep her cup from tipping over.

 

 

Mine was placed across the center and needed 5 fishing weights to balance it. I like the way her cup turned out and it looks like it is pouring over the saucer, whereas mine looks like it is barely making it onto the saucer. I love it when real life meets with what we learn.

 

 

The original post was from a round up of DIY crafts for Easter. It’s number 11 in the round up. When I clicked on the link it took me to a blog that was in a language I don’t recognize and I couldn’t find the craft on her site. So, here is what we did:

Gathering the materials:

• Tea cups
• Forks
• small fake flowers
• moss
• little animals and cute things to decorate with
• mini Easter eggs
• glue gun
• hot glue sticks
• fishing weights (PEG-6-SZ:1)

 

Why is it every time I find a cute craft to do it is next to impossible to find the right materials to do it?! We searched our local stores for tea cups. . . I really wanted cute tea cups but no one is carrying them right now. We could find bulky mugs and saucers but I had my heart set on tea cups. I also figured a mug would be harder to balance. So, we gathered flowers, mini eggs, moss and little animals and things from Hobby Lobby, but still no tea cups. Yeah for Amazon! I found these cute tea cups and ordered them. (Picture is clickable and will open in a new tab.)

 

The steps:

I got forks from Walmart and looked for the cheapest, thinnest forks they had. Our neighbor has a heavy vice and my husband took the forks there and bent them forward about where the tines begin and then approximately 2 inches down the handle he bent the handle backwards. This gives the fork a little bit of a zig-zag shape.

 

 

 

Using the Hot glue gun we glued the cup to the handle of the fork with the bent part resting on the edge of the cup.

 

 

 

 

Once the glue cooled and it felt stable and secure we glued the tines to the saucer. ***Remember that where you put the fork is important and it will be more stable if the tines are closer to the edge of the plate, like my daughters. (Not like mine that is pictured.)
(Smarty pants!)

 

 

 

 

I laid it down to work on covering my fork with moss and hot gluing it into place. My daughter, “A” didn’t care if her fork was completely covered. Then, I turned it over and hot glued more moss to the back of the fork.

 

 

I then put the fishing weights onto the edge of the saucer and began gluing them one at a time until it was stable. When all was said and

done . . .

I then decorated the cup to make sure more weights weren’t needed, before decorating the saucer.

 

Once the cup was the way I wanted it, I decorated the saucer and then the fork handle.

They turned out so cute! This would be really cute for Easter or Mother’s Day.

 

 

 

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