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Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Name |
Description |
| A Force to be Reckoned with: | |
| The Energy of a Pendulum: | This is an introductory Predict-Observe-Explain lesson on the Conservation of Energy using a Pendulum Simulation and the Pendulum Perspectives video. This lesson will reinforce the difference between kinetic and potential energy and help students make a connection to the law of the conservation of energy. This lesson includes a ready made lab sheet and video overview of the lesson. |
| Energy From The Sun To Make Some Fun!: | MSP Racing Company is a cutting edge company that wishes to break through and develop the fastest renewable energy vehicle of its kind. In this lesson, students will be divided into teams of three and will be assigned the task of developing a solar-powered race car to be purchased and developed in full scale by MSP Racing. Each group of students will be employees of MSP Racing Company and will have to develop, test, and present their car to the boss (teacher) of the company. |
| Laws and Theories in Nature: | This lesson will begin with a presentation to discuss the major differences between hypotheses, theories and laws in science and society and identify several examples of laws and theories. The students will then go outside and make/write down/photograph examples of nature supporting these laws/theories. |
| Conservation of Energy Mini Stations: | Students will work through four stations manipulating various objects to foster their understanding of the Law of Conservation of Energy. |
| Bouncing Balls in Kinetic and Potential Energy Transformations: | This lesson uses tennis balls to explain how potential energy can be converted to kinetic energy and how kinetic energy can be converted to potential energy. |
| Discovering Your Potential: | This is a multiple-day lesson to teach students about the Law of Conservation of Energy with a focus on the types of potential energies and how potential and kinetic energies can transfer from one to the other and back. |
| Hot Rod Half Pipe : | Students create a U-shaped track for toy cars and demonstrate how potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and back to potential. |
| Pop Off!: | Students will measure and graph the energy released by Alka-Seltzer and water in a closed system. |
| Daring Dive: | This resource is designed for students to better understand energy. It is designed to teach students using a more engaging and hands-on approach by having students examine the energy transformations during a bungee jump (by building a model bungee cord with rubber bands). |
| Kinetic Energy and Carbon Dioxide: | Students investigate the increase of their respiration rate of carbon dioxide due to the change of energy from chemical potential energy to kinetic energy. This lesson plan involves students doing physical activities to see the change from potential to kinetic energy. |
| Energy Transformations: | In this introductory lesson, students will demonstrate potential and kinetic energy transformations using a tennis ball and a rubber band. |
| Cool Science Investigation: Stop and Go Energies: | This lesson plan gets the students involved in learning about the various types of potential and kinetic energies. There is a 'mystery box' and pre-test to help introduce the concept of energy leading to potential and kinetic. The students will then research energy information in teams to come up with a good definition and examples of their energy, plus find 2 pictures to help illustrate their examples. They will take their research notes and create an energy card that is used in an energy match-up activity. The unit wraps up with an individual energy summative worksheet where they can write down the knowledge that they can have gained. The exit ticket gives the teacher a final glimpse into their understanding of the basic energy types before moving onto energy transformations. |
| See it! Read it! Share it! It's the Law!: | What role do Potential and Kinetic energy play in regards to the Law of Conservation of Energy? The lesson consists of a series of shifts from whole group activities to cooperative group activities. This lesson encompasses literacy aspects while providing conceptual knowledge of energy transformation. Included in the lesson is the student's informational text packages, an anticipation guide, answer keys, and links to a video, an interactive, and an energy song to allow comparing multimedia resources to text resources. |
| The Puck Stops Here: | After learning about transfer of energy, specifically the loss of kinetic energy to friction, students get a chance to test friction |
| How Fast can Dominoes Travel in a Chain Reaction?: | The students will complete an inquiry activity using dominoes to determine what variables affect the speed of the chain reaction. Students will have to consider and decide on the best spacing between dominoes to achieve the fastest travel time and ensure the spacing remains constant by carefully measuring the distance between each domino. They will set up 5 dominoes at a time to set off a chain reaction alongside another 5 dominoes space differently. Students can create a bar graph to show how the spacing affects the speed. Students can have fun while learning or reinforcing their understanding of potential and kinetic energy, measuring distance, measuring elapsed time, recording data, making and interpreting graphs and using the distance formula to calculate the rate of speed. |
| Punkin Chunkin - An Engineering Design Challenge: | This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concepts of the transfer of potential and kinetic energy. It is not intended as an initial introduction to this benchmark. |
| Elastic Potential Energy: | Students will explore the relationship between force and mass as it applies to elastic potential energy. |
| Potential and Kinetic Energy; "To Move or not to Move".: | Students will investigate, through a guided exploration lab, using a tennis ball, the Law of Conservation of Energy to differentiate between Potential and Kinetic Energy, and identify real life situations where potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy and vice versa. |
| Enlightening Explorations, Part I: | This lesson contains three student experiments: How Light Travels, Comparing Light Sources, and Reflective Surfaces. |
| Falling Water: | Students drop water from different heights to demonstrate the conversion of water's potential energy to kinetic energy. |
| Hot-Wheeler-Coaster: | Students will be put into groups of 3-4 and supplied with the necessary materials to build a hot wheels track that has at least two hills. The challenge will be to design an experiment to test whether the car will coast over a second hill that is at least as high as the first one. Be sure to allow the students the freedom to choose which hill's height to vary, as either will work to demonstrate the lesson concept. |
Vetted resources students can use to learn the concepts and skills in this topic.
Vetted resources caregivers can use to help students learn the concepts and skills in this topic.
