http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaZuCdeO5iU
At the URL above, you can find this video on YouTube!
Make a Magic Whoozie Stick!
The Wonderful Whoozie Stick
© 2009 James P. Louviere
The Whoozie Stick – An activity that challenges the onlooker to think analytically in terms of cause and effect.
Visualize this: A class of learners gathers around the teacher or his trained helper.
The teacher holds a stick. It is about as long as a 12-inch (30cm) ruler. It’s a little bigger around that a pencil, and has a series of notches along the top. At the front of the stick is a “propeller” like piece of wood with a nail through the center. The “propeller” is free to spin around the nail.
The teacher explains that “This is a Whoozie stick and it can respond to commands.”
He starts rubbing the long stick with a shorter round stick, and the propeller begins to spin. The teacher keeps the rhythm going and the propeller continues to spin without stopping. Then the teacher says “Whoozie,” and continues stroking the Whoozie stick in the same way as before, but the propeller stops and reverses its spin.
Every times the teacher says the “Magic” word, the propeller stops and reverses its spin.
This is an example of a puzzling situation where the learners are instinctively engaged in finding a logical, scientifically verifiable answer to the puzzle.
Make your Whoozie Stick and practice using it. The science will be explained at the end of the construction instructions.
Materials:
· A thin common nail with a head big enough to keep the “propeller” piece of wood from falling off the front end of the Whoozie stick.
· A wooden dowel about 3/8 inch (0.9 cm) in diameter and about 10 in. (25 cm) long.
· A wooden dowel about the same diameter, or a little skinnier, and about 6 in. (15 cm) long.
· A small flat piece of wood – cut from a craft stick or Popsicle® stick, cut to about 4 in (10 cm) long, with a center hole drilled in it. It will be held onto the front end of the 10 in (25 cm) Whoozie stick by the nail mentioned in Item 1 above. It must be able to spin freely around the nail.
Along the top of the Whoozie stick, cut a series of notches. They have to be deep enough to make the long stick vibrate steadily, and they must be placed at regular intervals along the stick so they produce a steady vibration when the short stick is rubbed to and fro over them.
Scientific Explanation:
The steady rubbing on the Whoozie stick produces a “harmonic” vibration reaction in the propeller. It has to move because of the steady bumping of the nail, but can only move in two directions, clockwise and counter-clockwise.
Moving your thumb forward or backward along the Whoozie stick changes the frequency of the vibrations, and the only way motion of the propeller can change is by stopping and reversing, since it has little "choice" the way it is limited in its motion.
© 2009 James P. Louviere Belmont, Massachusetts. USA June 26 2009, 11:21 PM\
I did not invent the Whoozie Stick. It was a traditional toy used in families in the 20th century. When I encouraged every student to bring hand-crafted object from home, one student at the Schweinfurt American School, around 1979, brought in a Whoozie Stick and demonstrated it for the class.
Like all the students, I was puzzled by the behavior of the propeller when the boy gave it the Whoozie command. He obligingly showed how to move one’s thumb in order to produce the stopping and reversing action. That, and the Water Whiffle, were perhaps the best student-furnished activities I’ve ever seen.
JPL
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