PBS
Wgbh: Peep and the Big Wide World: Introduce Ramps
An introductory activity where students discover the way things roll and slide down ramps and hills.
PBS
Wgbh: Peep and the Big Wide World: Ramps All Around
Take the students outside on a walking field trip where they can notice ramps and slanted surfaces in the neighborhood.
PBS
Wgbh: Peep and the Big Wide World: Explore and Play: Ramps Around Us
Set up several ramps around the room and allow the students to explore and investigate how they work.
PBS
Wgbh: Peep and the Big Wide World: Indoor Ramps
Have students make ramps out of flat pieces of cardboard and other materials.
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: An Inclined Plane
In this activity, Students can use a Force Sensor to measure the force needed to lift an object and the force needed to pull the same object up an inclined plane. They will also calculate work done and efficiency and make conclusions.
Other
60 Second Science: Rolling Down Ramps Experiment
Explore the characteristics of inclined planes while observing how drops of colored water flow down a ramp and on different surfaces.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Watch It Slide!
Students use inclined planes as they recreate the difficult task of raising a monolith of rock to build a pyramid. They compare the push and pull of different-sized blocks up an inclined plane, determine the angle of inclination, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tools and Equipment, Part I
Through a series of activities, students discover that the concept of mechanical advantage describes reality fairly well. They act as engineers creating a design for a ramp at a construction site by measuring four different inclined...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Seven Speedy Pieces
In this activity, students will determine the coasting distance of a toy car if it is rolled down from different fixed distances down an inclined plane.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pyramid Building: How to Use a Wedge
Students learn how simple machines, including wedges, were used in building both ancient pyramids and present-day skyscrapers. In a hands-on activity, students test a variety of wedges on different materials (wax, soap, clay, foam)....
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: How Incline Affects Speed
Students determine how incline affects speed. They will communicate their results graphically.
Shodor Education Foundation
Shodor Interactivate: Incline
This applet allows the user to make observations about the relationship between speed and position and how both of these are affected by initial velocity and the incline on which the biker is traveling.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines From Pyramids to Skyscrapers
Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier, and which people have used to provide mechanical advantage for thousands of years. Students learn about the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Heave Ho!
Students will discover the scientific basis for the use of inclined planes. They will explore, using a spring scale, a bag of rocks and an inclined plane, how dragging objects up a slope is easier than lifting them straight up into the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines
Through a five-lesson series with five hands-on activities, students are introduced to six simple machines - inclined plane, wedge, screw, lever, pulley, wheel-and-axle - as well as compound machines, which are combinations of two or...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Galileo: His Experiments
This interactive activity from the NOVA Web site samples Galileo's experiments with falling objects, projectiles, inclined planes, and pendulums.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Inertia: An Object in Motion Will Tend to Stay in Motion
This activity is a take off of Galileo's experiment with the inclined planes to show that an object in motion would stay in a straight line motion if no outside forces acted were acting on it. In this version, students will roll a ball...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: What Is Gravity?
In this activity, students will perform a series of experiments with inclined planes. They will learn that as the angle of inclination of the inclined plane approaches 90 degrees, the value of the acceleration of the cart traveling down...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Solid Rock to Building Block
Students continue their pyramid building journey, acting as engineers to determine the appropriate wedge tool to best extract rock from a quarry and cut into pyramid blocks. Using sample materials (wax, soap, clay, foam) representing...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering: Simple Machines
Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier. Students are introduced to the six types of simple machines - the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane, screw, and pulley - in the context of the...
CK-12 Foundation
Ck 12: Plix Series: Friction
[Free Registration/Login Required] Use given friction formulas and an interactive diagram for an inclined plane to solve a motion problem. After the activity, answer a challenge question to check for understanding.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: A Simple Solution for the Circus
In this activity, students are challenged to design a contraption using simple machines to move a circus elephant into a rail car. After students consider their audience and constraints, they work in groups to brainstorm ideas and select...
Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement (SMILE)
Smile: The Soup Roll
A lab activity written for grade 5. Students roll various cans down inclined planes and compare the times required to reach the bottom. Results are related to rotational inertia.
PBS
Wgbh: Peep and the Big Wide World: Explore and Play: Sliding Peep
Students make their own ramps and test them out by sending various objects down them.