Thomas Edison Unit Study

We created moving picture films using the same concepts of the first films.

The Story of Inventions tells the story of several inventors and their inventions which changed the world. The phonograph was one of the first and most important inventions of Thomas Edison. After reading about the phonograph we watched this short video to see how it worked.

Then we watched this 30 minute video biography on the life of Thomas Edison. There are many great stories from the life of Thomas Edison. One of my favorites is about how he pulled a duck off it's nest to try to hatch the eggs himself.

Thomas Edison was the first person to build a business by employing inventors. One of the companies inventions was the moving picture.

After reading about his invention of moving pictures we watched this video and then the kids created their own moving pictures.

Since we are living in the age of computers the kids used the computer to create their moving picture films. Using Paint they created a series of slightly different images. Then the images were loaded into Live Movie Maker and viewed in quick succession to display movement. This activity combined today's technology with concepts of motion to show how movies were first created.

This video show a kid making a great metal detecting discovery.

This movie features a dancer.



To see more of our engineering activities please visit our Science page.

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