This lesson will help students understand Netwon's three laws of motion, design artwork which demonstrates this knowledge and present and interpret the art. The laws of motion state that bodies in motion will have a continuous velocity unless acted upon by an outside force; the greater an object is, the greater the force will have to be to accelerate it; and for every action of force there is an equal and opposite reaction. This activity can be modified for students in grades four through 12. You will need paper clips, string, aluminum foil, index cards, writing instruments,colored pencils, construction paper and scissors. Discuss the forces of motion with students and go over the vocabulary associate with the laws. Have student brainstorm a list of everyday examples. In pairs, ask students to create a visual representation of the law of their choice.
When students have finished their projects, ask them to present in front of their classmates. Ask students to take note of what law they think is being demonstrated in each piece.
Finish with an overview discussion of the lesson.
This lesson will help students explore and understand the applications of sound waves. You will need a computer with Microsoft Excel and a copy of the sonar data sheet available at the University of Virginia's Physics activity web page, which can be found at the link listed below. Open the data sheet in Microsoft Excel. There is a sample output graph for "Lake Katie." The numbers listed in the grids stand for the amount of time it took for sound to bounce off the bottom of the lake and return for different locations. Ask students to use this data to make a graph of the topography of the lake's bottom. You can also have a discussion of other possible uses of sonar.
This lesson teaches the principle of the conservation of energy, terms such as kinetic and potential energy, energy losses. Materials needed for each group include tennis balls, two pieces of 70 centimeter cardboard, heavy duty scissors, box knife, meter stick and a hot glue gun with glue. Students will design and construct tennis ball roller coasters made of the cardboard. Each coaster must have three hills. The ball starts at the top of the first hill and must roll over two hills to the finish. Ask students to think about the design of all three hills, including height, steepness, curve of the tracks and places of resistance. Each valley dips to a total of 20 cm. from the bottom of the cardboard. The left and right sides of the coasters should be cut from each piece of cardboard. The remainder is for rectangles to serve as spacers between the tracks. This activity will work for both middle school and high school students. You can adapt the activity by asking high schoolers to calculate the gravitational potential energy of the tennis ball at the top of each hill. End with a discussion of real world roller coaster models and how they work.
In this lesson, high school students will understand the concept of redshift and the conclusions that scientists are able to draw about the universe because of this phenomenon. Materials needed include a computer with Internet access, a shallow pan, a pencil and water. Prerequisites for this lesson include a discussion of the spectrum and behavior of light waves. Divide the class into groups. Each group will fill a shallow pan with water. The water waves will model the behavior of light waves. Ask the groups to tap the surface of the water at the center of the pan with a pencil at a fast and regular speed. Students should see that the waves move away from the pencil with an equal speed in all directions. Ask students to predict the direction the waves would move if the pan were tapped to the left or the right. After making these predictions, ask students to test their hypothesis. This activity should be followed by a discussion of the failed or successful group predictions. You can also discuss how this activity shows that the light from moving galaxies is red-shifted, which means that the wavelengths of light from the galaxies are longer than expected.