SC.912.P.10.6

Using inquiry techniques, students, working in groups, are asked to design and conduct experiments to test the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Law of Conservation of Momentum. Upon being provided with textbooks, rulers, measuring tapes, stopwatches, mini-storage containers, golf balls, marbles, rubber balls, steel balls, and pennies, they work cooperatively to implement and revise their hypotheses. With limited guidance from the teacher, students are able to visualize the relationships between mass, velocity, height, gravitational potential energy, kinetic energy, and total energy as well as the relationships between mass, velocity, and momentum.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students compete with one another to design and build a roller coaster from insulation tubing and tape that will allow a marble to travel from start to finish with the lowest average velocity. In so doing, students learn about differences between distance and displacement, speed and velocity, and potential and kinetic energy. They also examine the Law of Conservation of Energy and concepts related to force and motion.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will research various types of amusement park rides and use their findings to design a feasible ride of their own. They will summarize their findings and present their ride design to the class. Each student will then write a persuasive letter to a local amusement park describing the reasons their ride design is the best.

Type: Lesson Plan

Explore how pendulums show the transformation of gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy and back with Dr. Simon Capstick in this engaging video. Don't miss his broken-nose defying test of the physics with a bowling ball pendulum.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Play with one or two pendulums and discover how the period of a simple pendulum depends on the length of the string, the mass of the pendulum bob, and the amplitude of the swing. It's easy to measure the period using the photogate timer. Students can vary friction and the strength of gravity.

• Design experiments to describe how variables affect the motion of a pendulum
• Use a photogate timer to determine quantitatively how the period of a pendulum depends on the variables you described
• Determine the gravitational acceleration of planet X
• Explain the conservation of Mechanical energy concept using kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy
• Describe energy chart from position or selected speeds

Type: Virtual Manipulative

Learn about conservation of energy with a skater! Build tracks, ramps and jumps for the skater and view the kinetic energy, potential energy, thermal energy as he moves. You can adjust the amount of friction and mass. Measurement and graphing tools are built in.

Type: Virtual Manipulative