STEM: The Building of DaVinci’s Clock

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The other day my son and I made a model of DaVinci’s clock, we learned a lot and had a great deal of fun.

I picked up this kit on sale one day thinking it would be great to build some day and it was!

The kit was made completely of plastic, included everything except the coins needed as a weight.

This instructions were clear but we learned it was good to both read the words AND look at the pictures.

The lad needed to work out how to get the clock to keep time.  This video doesn’t show that accuracy, but it at least shows the clock working.
 
  

A couple of the big things we learned was 

1. Hands off mom, this boy will do it himself!!
2. Oops… reading the instructions AND looking at the pictures helps to prevent mistakes.
3. Asking for help when needed is an excellent thing to do.
4. IT WORKS!!!!!!

But other things that we learned:

1. Da Vinci didn’t actually invent the clock, clocks had been around for a LONG time before DaVinci came on the scene and were becoming more accurate.
2. Da Vinci’s major innovation was to have springs, rather than weights operate his clock.
3. Leonardo included diamonds and semi-precious stones in his design of the clock

We have a goal to make this water clock one day.. possibly next week. 

Some websites we used to help us learn:
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Inventions. 
Civil Machines.