This amazing toy can balance on your fingertip!
This simple toy can balance on a table edge or a fingertip. So get your craft on and have some physics fun!
If your acrobat won’t balance properly, try adding another paperclip to each hand. Or, you can cut a few millimetres off the sides of the legs, to make them a bit lighter.
Real acrobats are very strong and extremely skilled to balance upside down. Our cardboard acrobat is neither, but it has a clever secret.
You can think of the cardboard acrobat as a seesaw. The middle of a seesaw is called the pivot. On this acrobat, that’s the point on the top of its head where it’s balancing. Then, on one side of the seesaw are the acrobat’s hands, and on the other, its body and legs.
To keep the acrobat balanced on your fingertip, the hands must stay down, and the body and legs up. The hands need the extra weight of paperclips to balance all the cardboard on the other side. Since the legs are so far away from the pivot compared to the hands, the hands have to be much heavier than the rest of the body to create this balance.
Luckily, paperclips are heavy compared to thin cardboard. They can adjust the balance without looking big and bulky. And the result is a perfectly balanced acrobat that looks precarious!
If this acrobat has one hand that’s much heavier than the other, it can still balance on its head. You can experiment with the number of paperclips on each hand to have your acrobat perform at a daring angle!
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23 September, 2021 at 10:52 am
Not balancing, hanging. The centre of gravity is below the point of support.
23 September, 2021 at 10:54 am
You’re technically correct! The very best kind of correct!
1 October, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Thank u for this activity. I am looking to print out the template but not sure where I can find the template.
thanks….
1 October, 2021 at 12:08 pm
Thanks for the heads up!
It should work now, but if it doesn’t, try:
https://blog.doublehelix.csiro.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/balancing-acrobat-template.pdf