Term 6 - Magnificent Metals

Magnificent metals are everywhere! From earrings to rockets, metals have shaped the world we live in today, so we need to learn about them! In year 3, we learn to become fantastic physicists, exploring the world of forces and metals. Posing scientific enquiries, we discover the properties of magnets and observe what happens when they come in to contact with different substances. Our existing knowledge is challenged when we realise that not all coins are attracted to magnets! As we learn more about magnets, we are able to predict whether magnets attract or repel based on their poles and we will be able to group objects into ‘magnetic’ and ‘non-magnetic’ categories. Using our forces knowledge, we investigate how objects move on different surfaces using a variety of forces and learn how this applies to the wider world. By the end of the topic, the children will notice that some forces need contact between two objects, but magnetic forces can act at a distance.