Middle School Science

Exploration

Until the late 1800’s, electricity and magnetism were regarded as separate forces. A number of scientists, including Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, made important discoveries which led to our current understanding of electricity and magnetism. The interaction between positive and negative charges is, in fact, one force, the electromagnetic force, which results in both electrical currents and magnetic fields.

Exploration

When an object is in free fall, the only force acting on the object is gravity. In general terms, an object moving upward is not considered “falling,” however, if gravity is the only force acting on the object (air resistance being negligible) then the object is in fact in a state of free fall. The projectile motion of an object is the trajectory of an object in free fall near Earth’s surface after being thrown or launched in the air. The curved path of the projectile is under the effect of gravity only after being launched.

Exploration

The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant. Over time, all energy is conserved. It is neither created nor destroyed-instead it transfers from one form to another. When shaking a jar of sand, what happens to the temperature of the sand? Explore how this relates to the law of conservation of energy.

Objective

Energy Transfer Experiment: Gravitational Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy

Does a falling object have potential energy or kinetic energy or both? In other potential energy experiments, we demonstrated the Law of Conservation of Energy: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but instead, energy transfers from one form to another. In this investigation, we will take a look at the role of gravity in energy transfer.

Introduction

The law of conservation of energy tells us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Instead, it changes from one form of energy to another. Potential energy is energy that is stored in an object. Potential energy can transfer into other forms of energy, like kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is energy in an object because of its motion.

Exploration

What is velocity? Velocity is often defined as speed with direction and speed is often defined as how fast or slow an object is traveling. But what exactly does being fast or slow mean? How can we represent an object’s velocity with an equation, graph, or other model? What is acceleration?

Exploration Part 1

Previously you learned that the net force acting on an object is related to the object’s motion. The net force determines whether the velocity of an object will change. This is described in Newton’s First Law of Motion:

“An object at rest will remain at rest or an object in motion will remain in uniform motion unless acted upon by an outside force”.

Investigation Purpose 

Using office supplies, students will design, build, test, and iterate on a crash cushion that will reduce the force experienced by a cart as it crashes into a wall.

This lesson has been developed for Grade 8 students.

Please see video link as well as attached Hyperdoc. 

Phenomena or Driving Question: Make a vehicle that travels one meter powered only by two balloons

Lesson description:  In this unit of study, Newton’s Laws will be used to explain the forces and motions of objects on Earth and in Space.  This Lesson is the Engineering design project at the end of the unit.

PE’s addressed: MS-PS2-1, MS-PS-2-2, MS-ETS1-1, MS-ETS1-4

This lesson is courtesy of Heather Wygant and Susan Paulsen, Santa Clara, CA

You can find an overview of the lesson here: http://bit.ly/2oeSMvL