Big Idea
The purpose of this activity is to help students reflect on their lived experiences and prior ideas before diving into complex physics concepts. The activity uses a common playground activity — swinging — to help students begin thinking about speed, kinetic energy, potential energy and gravitational potential energy.
The writing component of this lesson is designed as a formative assessment after covering the concepts of speed, kinetic energy, potential energy and gravitational potential energy. Students should show an improvement in their description of these concepts at the end of the unit.
Standards Addressed
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS
Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns
Observed patterns in nature guide organization and classification and prompt questions about relationships and causes underlying them.
Disciplinary Core Ideas
PS2.A: Forces and Motion
All positions of objects and the directions of forces and motions must be described in an arbitrarily chosen reference frame and arbitrarily chosen units of size. In order to share information with other people, these choices must also be shared.
COMMON CORE LEARNING STANDARDS
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.2
Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments or technical processes.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.2.D
Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
NEW YORK INTERMEDIATE SCIENCE STANDARDS
Standard 4: The Physical Setting
PS. 5.1a: The motion of an object is always judged with respect to some other object or point. The idea of absolute motion or rest is misleading.
PS. 5.1b: The motion of an object can be described by its position, direction of motion and speed.
PS 4.1c: Potential energy is the energy an object possesses by virtue of its position or condition.
PS 4.1d: Kinetic energy is the energy an object possesses by virtue of its motion.