Lego blocks can be surprisingly helpful for teaching students how mass is distributed throughout the universe.
That’s why Northeastern professor Stefan Kautsch made them a central focus of the physics component of the university’s Bridge to Science summer program, an expansion of the longstanding Bridge to Calculus program.
The six-week training bootcamp is designed for underserved Boston Public School students to sharpen their calculus and STEM-based skills before the start of the new school year.
But what do Legos have to do with physics or calculus?
Lego sets all follow a similar 4:1 ratio — for every large Lego piece, there are equivalent four smaller pieces that equal half of its mass, Kautsch says. Notably, that same ratio can be observed in the stars.
“For every star that is the mass of the sun, there are four stars with half of the mass of the sun,” he says. That ratio can be observed again and again in the formation of galaxy clusters and planets.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
