In the middle of our defying gravity experiment my 3-year old walked into the room and saw Luke Skywalker hanging upside down on a paper clip connected to a magnet (photo below).

“Why is it not falling?” he demanded, his eyes wide with wonder. Even a 3-year old has a pretty good notion of how gravity works.

Star Wars is of huge interest to all my kids. Since we haven’t actually seen any of the movies, except my oldest son who watched bits of A New Hope, all the excitement comes from books.

We read a lot of Star Wars books. If Amazon sells it, we have probably read it. We also read aloud the original Star Wars trilogy book.

What I love about Star Wars is that it’s so easy to turn it into a lesson on any subject.

Let’s write a letter to Luke Skywalker. English.

Five stormtroopers boarded the jet and three more storm troopers joined them. Math.

Velocity? Acceleration? Two sun planets? Science.

One of the science concepts that caught my kids’ interest is gravity. We decided it would be fun to explore this topic in more detail, do a couple of simple experiments (with Star Wars Lego characters) and answer some questions.

What is gravity? How strong is it? And can we break it?

Gravity as a force that keeps us on the ground. It is also keeping Earth and the other planets in our Solar system close to Sun. It is strong enough to hold us to the surface of the planet. It is strong enough to hold molecules of gas in the atmosphere.

Gravity is one of the rare scientific concepts that is easy to see. Just pick up any toy and let it go.

It will fall down.

The force of the pull depends on the mass of the object. Does it mean a piano will fall out of the window faster than a tennis ball? Let’s try the first experiment.

Experiment 1: Gravity

What you need

Star Wars Lego Characters

Blocks or books for stacking

Pan with flour (optional, but oh so fun)

Ruler

Objective

To build a bridge over a pan filled with flour and flip the characters of different sizes at the same time to see if they all land the same time.

Procedure

Find Star Wars Lego characters of different sizes. We picked a smaller, lighter and rounder R2-D2 to be our lightest object. We picked a heavier and bulkier Storm Trooper and made him even heavier by giving him a weapon (our heaviest object). And we decided that Luke will make a good medium weight object if we give him a light gun.

If you don’t have Star Wars Lego Characters just pick any 2 objects: heavy and light.

To make the experiment more exciting and to make sure all the characters fall at the same time, we decided to build a gravity station. Use blocks or books to create two stacks. Put a ruler or any other flat, straight object across the void. Place a pan with flour under the ruler.

Ask your kids, “Do you think these three characters will hit the ground at the same time?” Older kids can record their predictions in a science journal.

Flip the ruler.

“What happened?”

You should have heard only one thud as all the characters hit the flour at exactly the same time.

Repeat as needed to make absolutely sure.

The only reason we used the pan with flour is that, according to my kids, it makes it much more exciting and we are all about being excited here! But you can make an additional study of imprints and how depth varies between objects of different sizes and weights.

If you don’t want to bother with the bridge and a flour pan, just pick two objects, stand over an even surface and drop your items from the same height at the same time. Did your objects reach the ground at the same time?

It seems strange but objects that weigh a lot fall at the same speed that objects that weigh a little.

Of course my kids are obsessed with anything sensory and they spent the next few hours playing with Lego Star Wars characters having all kinds of misadventures in the pan of flour.

Cleaning tip: whatever you do, do NOT let the flour get wet.

Defying Gravity

Can the force of gravity be defied? Do you know that when you jump, for just a second, you are defying gravity? Can you think of some other examples where gravity can be broken? What about static electricity that causes your hair stand up on end? What about magnets? Can magnets prevent a paper clip from falling down?

If you are familiar with the classical magnets-paper clip experiment, you know that a paper clip will rais in the air and hover, if there is a magnet placed over it.

As you can see the paper clip is prevented from flying towards the magnet because the string is attached to the paper clip and taped to the bottom of the box. The magnet is pulling the paper clip up and since it can’t quite reach the magnet, it just hangs in the air defying gravity.

Magnets and paper clips are fascinating. Thinking back to our Lego Man Goes Skiing experiment last winter, we got an idea to try paper clips and magnets to show how Star Wars Characters will NOT fall down when they should be falling down.

Experiment 2: Defying Gravity

Our original idea was to attach paper clips to the Star Wars Lego characters with tape. Tie a string around the characters and tape the string to the ground. Then use a heavy magnet to raise the Star Wars characters in the air. Our hypotheses was that the magnet would pull the paper clips up and the characters will hover. Unfortunately, our hypothesis didn’t work out because our magnets were not strong enough to keep the characters in the air. We are still looking for stronger magnets that will let us keep the Lego men in the air but for now we modified the experiment, so that we could still defy gravity even with weaker magnets.