shoes and friction investigation

I have used this resource with year 5 pupils to investigate which surfaces give the most friction when a shoe is pulled across them. I usually use the desk, a chain, the classroom floor (mine doesn’t have carpet), a rug and (if the weather is good) the playground and grass. The method describes using a newton metre but you could use an elastic band instead and measure how much it stretches. (If you are doing this be careful that the band doesn’t snap and ping into a child’s eyes.) There are two parts to this, the experiment and the write up.