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TE Activity: Heavy Helicopters
Students study the concepts of weight and drag while making paper helicopters. They measure how adding more weight to the helicopter changes the time for the helicopter to fall to the ground. They apply what they examine to the work of...
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How Do Things Fall?
Students study forces by examining the force of gravitational attraction. They observe how objects fall and measure the force of gravitational attraction upon objects. Students discover that, since gravitational constants are different...
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Crash! Bang!
Students study the physical force of linear momentum by investigating collisions. They analyze the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions. They calculate linear momentum.
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Bombs Away!
Students design and build a device to protect and accurately deliver a dropped egg. They review and study a number of vocabulary words that are associated with this lesson. They work in a small group in order to develop a successful...
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TE Lesson: Tsunami Attack!
Students examine how earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides can trigger tsunami waves. They determine how engineers use sensors to detect the dangerous wave, and how they help design building that will survive the wave force and water.
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Wheeling It In!
Students use everyday materials (milk cartons, water bottles, pencils, straws, candy) to build a small-scale transportation device that incorporates the wheel and axle and the lever. They race their carts/trucks, measure distance, time...
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Newton Gets Me Moving
Students discuss Newton's laws of motion. The conduct motion experiments by building "Newton Rocket Cars" from assorted materials. They propel the cars with rubber bands and wooden blocks and record the distance traveled on data sheets.
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Powerful Pulleys
Students explore the building of a pyramid and how pulleys were used to change the direction of applied force. They demonstrate the mechanical advantage of using a pulley and apply it to modern engineering.
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Engineering: Simple Machines
Fourth graders participate in activities to examine how simple machines help build things. They identify the six types of simple machines. They discover how simple machines where use historically to build pyramids and how they are still...
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Rocket Science 101
Students explore the aspects of Newton's First and Third Laws of Motion as they conduct controlled rocketry experiments and analyze the Mars Mission in terms of the principles of rocketry.
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Fettucini Physics
Students design a structure capabl;e of holding a textbook. They demonstrate that the weight of a textbook is offset by the normal force exerted on the book by the structure.
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Monkeying Around
Third graders study machines. They watch a video about and identify and chart machines they find at home and at school. They design and build simple and compound machines, create an advertisement for them and attempt to sell them at the...
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Konnecting Simple Machines and K'Nex
Students study and identify different types of simple machines and how they work. They design a simple machine.
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Simple Machines
Students explain how simple machines work and design their own machine. They use the Internet for research.
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Building Bridges
Students, in groups, design and test a scale bridge. They use the Internet to research three basic bridge designs -- beam, arch, and suspension -- and the forces that act upon them.
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Acceleration, Drag, Gravity, Motion, Forces, and Friction
Eighth graders build and run mousetrap cars in order to measure distance, time, and mass for their cars. They use these measurements to calculate average speed and kinetic energy, then create a slide show to visually explain how the car...
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Rock-A-Bye Pendulum
Third graders analyze the effects of force on an object in motion and its relationship to a change in speed. This lesson uses a pendulum to demonstrate the principle.
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Motion and Forces
Ninth graders create PowerPoint presentations to present Newton's three laws of motion, and make and launch rockets.
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Exploring Force: The Nutcracker
Students explore basic dance element of force, compare and contrast the use of force as it distinguishes the expressive qualities of a given dance, and explore the use of force in several of its many expressions.
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Medieval Catapults
Students design and build a working catapult or trebuchet to explore the concepts of force, motion, and distance.
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UFOs
Students, in groups, construct a catapult. Then they conduct a series of experiments by catapulting a marshmallow, using different lengths of spoons, across the room. They predict, measure, and record the measured distance on a worksheet.
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Ready, Set, Go!
Students predict if the height of a ramp affect how far an object travels. They design and conduct an experiment to test their predictions. The results are recorded and a graph is created to show the relationship between ramp height and...
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Robot Gears
Young scholars build simple gear trains and record data to discover how to compute gear ratios. They investigate the definition of torque and how torque can be increased or decreased in a gear train.
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Inertia
Students conduct a simple inertia demonstration by spinning a hardboiled and raw egg. They push a wagon to demonstrate inertia. They explore Newton's first and second laws of motion.