Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Spring Semester Week 4 - Januray 31, 2019 Newton's Laws of Motion


This week we will start the physics portion of Physical Science. I wanted to start off physics with some hands-on lab stations therefore we will be starting off our unit with Newton's Laws of Motion. Below are the notes and a short video to help students prepare.


Newton's Laws of Motion Notes

We began class with a discussion of Newton's Three Laws of Motion and a graphic organizer that reviewed this information.


We had a fun time in class with lab stations that covered Newton's three laws of motions. At the first lab station covering Newton's Law of Inertia, students used their fingers to knock a penny into a stack of pennies and observe what happened. 

Next, they knocked a pie pan with an egg on top off of a jar of water. In both instances, student's observed that objects resisted changes in motion. 


At the second lab station, students reviewed Newton's second law which covers the Force = mass x acceleration equation. Students rolled a large marble and a smaller marble down an inclined plane. They also dropped the large marble and a smaller marble from the same height into a pan of flour and observed the impressions that were made by the marbles.  In both cases they observed that heavier objects require more force to move the same distance as lighter objects. 
At the third station, students launched a balloon rocket and made observations as to how the momentum of the rocket changed in response to a change in the starting height of the rocket. 

They also made a Hero's Engine which models how rockets are propelled into space. Both of these activities illustrated Newton's Third Law which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reactions.


The fourth and final lab station had students review all three laws and then sort a series of pictures according to which Newton's law it illustrates. We enjoyed Newton's Laws of Motion and these concepts will help us as we take a closer look at motion in the upcoming weeks.

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