Finally, I announced that I could blow up a wind bag with just one or two breaths. To them this was highly unlikely. After all, after a mere five breaths blown into the bag only resulted in about a fourth of the thing being inflated.
My approach was slightly different from what I had seen them attempt. Instead of closing the end to blow through it, I opened it wide. Instead of blowing directly into the tube, I stayed back about eight inches and aimed a stream of air straight through the middle of the opening, resulting in the bag being nearly completely full of air.
But how could this be? Clearly my lungs could not have held the quantity of air that now filled the bag!
The answer, scientifically, comes from the Bernoulli Effect, which allows that the air being blown in such a manner actually attracts air from around it and pulls it into the bag behind it.
The lesson for us was that a good leader sometimes has to step back from the problem and look at it again (Sometimes we get too close to the problem, and we can't see the solution.). Also, a good leader brings others with him/her. Rather than trying to do everything myself, take control of every situation, and ignore input from my team, I should find ways to involve and engage my teammates.
And there is the lesson...and it was fun.
We even have some videos to show our progress. The video on the left shows the futile attempts of a few before they knew the "secret" methods that I used. The video on the right shows the result of using the better "leadership" methods.
My approach was slightly different from what I had seen them attempt. Instead of closing the end to blow through it, I opened it wide. Instead of blowing directly into the tube, I stayed back about eight inches and aimed a stream of air straight through the middle of the opening, resulting in the bag being nearly completely full of air.
But how could this be? Clearly my lungs could not have held the quantity of air that now filled the bag!
The answer, scientifically, comes from the Bernoulli Effect, which allows that the air being blown in such a manner actually attracts air from around it and pulls it into the bag behind it.
The lesson for us was that a good leader sometimes has to step back from the problem and look at it again (Sometimes we get too close to the problem, and we can't see the solution.). Also, a good leader brings others with him/her. Rather than trying to do everything myself, take control of every situation, and ignore input from my team, I should find ways to involve and engage my teammates.
And there is the lesson...and it was fun.
We even have some videos to show our progress. The video on the left shows the futile attempts of a few before they knew the "secret" methods that I used. The video on the right shows the result of using the better "leadership" methods.
| This was a tough comparison to make, but we had fun with it. I gave each Hoggatteer a wind bag to inflate with air. While that probably sounds simple, it was not. First, our little geniuses failed to notice that the wind bag is really just a tube of plastic, and when blowing it up the air simply exited the other end of the tube. Our lesson in this was that sometimes we need to look at an entire problem before approaching to solve it. In other words, we need to tie up some loose ends from the onset. Once we tied the other end of the tube, the inflation process got a little easier. But not my very much. I have to admit, the classroom became quite colorful for a while as kids attempted to blow up the red, yellow, green, and blue bags. Students were huffing and puffing all over the place. Some finally tried running with their bags in an attempt to force air into them. But that didn't work. | |
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