Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Swinging With Style

For Teachers 2nd - 4th
Students experientially learn about the characteristics of a simple physics phenomenon - the pendulum - by riding on playground swings. They use pendulum terms and a timer to experiment with swing variables. They extend their knowledge...
Lesson Plan
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College

Serc: Using Ph Et Simulations in High School Open Ended Pendulum Labs

For Teachers 9th - 10th
These labs provide examples of using very open-ended questions to guide students in exploring a simulation and designing their own experiments. These labs can lead to a high level of quantitative thinking about data analysis.
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Into the Swing of Things

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students learn the basic properties of periodic and harmonic motion, and how the rearrangement of the simple pendulum equation can be used to solve for gravitational acceleration, pendulum length, and gravity. At lesson plan end,...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Swinging on a String

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Students explore how pendulums work and why they are useful in everyday applications. In a hands-on activity, they experiment with string length, pendulum weight and angle of release. In an associated literacy activity, students explore...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Mechanics Mania

For Teachers 5th - 7th
Through ten lessons and numerous activities, students explore the natural universal rules engineers and physicists use to understand how things move and stay still. Together, these rules are called "mechanics." The study of mechanics is...