G TOAST Tumbling Toast

G TOAST Tumbling Toast Organiser’s Card About the activity This activity is designed to get children thinking about probability. Mayor Quandary seems to drop her toast butter-side down every morning, and she can’t work out why. Her secretary Dayley Diary thinks it’s Murphy’s Law but she’s not so sure. Can the investigators help? TUMBLING TOAST Through this activity you will support your group to: • Think about the world around them from a different perspective • Investigate and explore what living things they can find outdoors • Record their thoughts and ideas and present them to share with the group Kit list • Bread – supermarkets often sell off sliced bread at the end of the day. Try to get thick and thin slices. • Toasters (PAT tested), or toast • Knives • Butter (cheap margarine is fine) • Cardboard or plastic plates • Newspaper as a landing pad • Jam or other spread (optional) • Marker pens • Recording grid with three columns – type of toast, landed butter-side down, landed butter-side up (optional)

What to do 1. Read the ACTIVITY CARD to familiarise yourself with the activity. 2. Check the Kit list to ensure you have the correct resources. 3. Set the scene by discussing Mayor Quandary’s problem. Talk a little about Murphy’s Law to make sure that the children understand it. 4. Give children time to discuss what they know about Murphy’s Law and their experience of dropping toast. 5. Give children time to work out their plan. Tell them that they have limited resources so they need to plan carefully. 6. Remind children about being careful if they make the toast themselves. 7. Get them investigating. Start them off with comparing toast with and without butter. Then let them test other factors such as the height, the size of the bread, other spreads, how they drop it, etc. 8. They may find it helpful to mark the unbuttered toast each side with a marker pen so that they know which side is which. 9. Some children may need a bit of support but let them try things out first. 10. Remind them to keep notes of what is happening. 11. Give children about 20 minutes for their testing. 12. Give them a few minutes when they have cleared up to check their ideas before sharing their findings with the rest of the group. 13. They could make a display of all their toast samples and the outcomes. 14. They could write to Mayor Quandary suggesting what she might do. Encourage them to finish the letter with creative ideas. 15. There are extra challenges on the ACTIVITY CARD. These can be used if there is any spare time or if the children want to try out more ideas at home and earn a bonus sticker. Things to think about In this activity fair testing is important. If children are looking at the size of toast slices, they need to keep the way they drop it the same. If they are looking at the height of the drop, they need to keep the toast slices the same. To get reliable results each test needs to be repeated several times (20 is often recommended) to avoid the outcome being just chance. Watch out for fire detectors if you are making toast.