Leonardo Da Vinci - Artist and Scientist

One day Mum and I went to the Science Museum when we were meant to be going to the Natural History Museum because it was too long a queue.  We saw that they had a special exhibition about Leonardo DaVinci.  My class in New Zealand is learning about what a scientist is.  Leonardo DaVinci was a very famous scientist, artist, engineer, and inventor so I thought we should go to the exhibition.

Leonardo's Life

First I had to turn the steering wheel to move through time and learn about his life.

This is a page of his notebook with some of his designs.

This is one of his famous paintings.  I thought it was cool because he used one of the strategies I have learnt in my class at school.  That was using shading to create shade and light.

When the population got too big there were lots of problems.  Here are some of DaVinci's ideas for organising the city.  It looks like he's a really good problem solver.

DaVinci was also really interested in the human body.  He drew lots of diagrams and even dissected dead bodies because he was so curious to find out how they worked.  (Yuck!  But really interesting)

DaVinci also studied Maths.  He used some of the things he learned in maths to help with his inventions.

Models

After we learned about his life, the next part of the exhibition had some models of some of his inventions.

He was an army general so he made lots of inventions for war times.  Like this tool which was to sink ships.  It was screwed on the bottom of the ship and would put a big crack in the boat which let in water and sank the ship.

This cool invention is to get safely into an enemy castle without falling in the moat.  All it is is a ladder then a tunnel.  So you would rest it on the castle wall and then climb up the ladder and crawl through the tunnel.  The tunnel would protect you from archers.  

I thought about what I would do if I was the people trying to defend the castle.  I think they would shoot arrows or throw a spear through the hole in the tunnel.  So, if I was Leonardo, I would make a locking flap at the end to give me more time to get my weapon and shield ready to be able to protect myself as I came out.

This is a moving, revolving cannon.  In those days if you shot a cannon you would have to stop and reload the cannon so you could fire again.  But then there was a chance for the enemies cannons to blow you up.

This invention made sure it didn't happen.  It had 3 lots of cannons, so while one was firing you could load a different one.  So it never ran out.

This is wind-propelled chariot.

This is a model made from a design Leonardo had made for a parachute.  After this exhibition my brother told me that they actually made a real parachute using his design recently.  It actually work better than the modern day one.

This is another invention I loved.  It's a diving suit.  (Remember that when he invented this no-one had made one before. ) So he just thought about the problem of not being able to breath under water and fixed it.  It was a suit that had a tube that went from your mouth all the way up to a bell shaped object that floated on top of the water.  It trapped air underneath it and the end of the tube was in the air pocket so the diver could breath.

It also had heavy bags so the person would sink.









This invention would also help a diver.  It's a bit like a flipper we might use today.  Leonardo often copied things from nature so I think he might have copied this from a duck or a frog.

Some of his ideas for flying machines also copied flying animals like birds and bats.

Hands-on Activities

Then I got to do some hands on activities.

Matching patterns from his artwork.

In this activity you could use different crankshafts to make the bird peck by turning a handle that was attached.  The different shapes made it peck in different ways.  The smooth round ones made a smooth, gentle pecking motion.  The sharp bumpy edged ones made a strong, sharp peck.  Depending on how many bumps there were he would peck quickly or slowly.  I thought about different ways you could use these.  I thought that if you wanted to break something up you could use a sharp edged one with not many bumps so each bump was really strong, but if you wanted to smooth off something you could use the more even, rounder one with lots of little bumps.

In this activity I had to use the right cogs to move a lizard forward not backward.  So I had to pay close attention to how they all worked together.

Next was a pulley activity.  I had to choose where to put the rope to move the piggy up.  I worked out that the more pulleys it went round, the easier it was to lift up.

Drawing Inspiration from Living Organisms

The next part of the exhibition was called "Drawing Inspiration from Living Organisms."  This means  getting ideas from plants and animals.  This part showed us what scientists are doing right now to try and copy animals.

Because spider silk is so strong they are trying to find a way to make it, or to be able to produce a lot of it.

Other Scientists are studying how bees navigate and trying to get drones to work in the same way.

So what is a Scientist?

So after this exhibtion Mum and I sat down and talked about what I think a scientist is after learning about Leonardo.  Here are some things I think:

• a problem-solver
• a thinker
• creator
• imaginer
• invento
• observer
• experimenter
• somebody who is curious