0 to 60: What's my Acceleration?

What kid (and adult for that matter), at some point in their life does not look at the speedometer? And as soon as they figure out that some cars go faster than others, life takes on a new dimension. Cars. 

So today's lesson starts in the car, or whatever your vehicle is.

Teacher Prep: Make sure you understand acceleration. Here is a good discussion of acceleration. You can also just read the textbook. Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity with time. Since velocity is a vector quantity- it has speed and direction- any time I change the speed or the direction I am accelerating. That is why I accelerate when I go around a curve even if I keep my speed the same. I have changed my direction. and since velocity is speed +direction, I have changed my velocity. And since acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, I am accelerating.

Materials Needed: car, stopwatch, acceleration worksheet, pens or pencils.

Activity:

Get all the kids in the car. Make sure they are buckled. Give one child a stop watch. If one child can safely see the speedometer from where they are sitting, make them the speed watcher. The next child gets to be the recorder. If you only have one child, he will be the timer and you will be the speed watcher. You will only record beginning and ending times and speeds.

Go to a place where there is not much traffic and the road is fairly straight. You will accelerate from 0 to whatever the speed limit is on the road. You can run this test several times, accelerating at different rates each time.

1. Come to a complete stop.  Make sure your timer and recorder are ready. Have your recorder write the beginning time and speed on the worksheet.

2. Have your timer say go and start timing.

3. Accelerate to whatever the speed limit is. (Please be safe.)

4. When you reach the speed limit, the speed watcher calls stop. Timer stops the stopwatch. 

5. Record the  final speed and final time.

6. Repeat several times.

7. Use the companion worksheet to figure out what your acceleration was.

Acceleration of gravity:

Galileo was the first to prove that the acceleration of a free falling object due to gravity was the same on heavy and light objects. The Galileo link under Resources on the Web has some great interactive media and a video showing the astronauts dropping a feather and a hammer on the moon.

Tree Climbing and Science. How cool can it get?

Here is an activity that calculates the height of an object by measuring the time of a free falling object. Great for all ages. My kids are tree climbers, so I let them climb a tree and drop 5 objects each from the spot they climbed to. I timed the drops and recorded them. Then we went inside and figured out how high they climbed. They loved it.

Resources on the Web:

Acceleration Worksheet

Why cars accelerate around a curve, even if their speed stays constant.

explanation of acceleration from Kuhn Academy. Good Resource.

explanation of acceleration around a curve from Kuhn Academy.

Lesson Plan on Galileo experiments, written materials and videos

Running With Physics: An Introduction to Motion

Module 9: Exploring Creation with Physical Science

This week, I decided to give you kind of a script of how I plan to teach the concepts of motion to my 9th, 6th, 4th and K4 kids all at once.

This lesson begins outdoors. Get everyone to a place where they can run. Have a starting line marked off.

Okay everybody hold still. Look at me. Am I moving? How do you know? How can you tell? (It doesn't matter whether they say you are moving, or aren't moving. What you want from them is how they know you are or aren't moving.) You can tell I moved because my position changed. I used to be over here, and now I'm over there. MOTION is change in position over time.

In order to know what our change is, we have to have a REFERENCE POINT. Something that appears not to change it's position. When I compare myself to that point, I can tell whether or not I've moved.  For us, the REFERENCE POINT is this starting line. If I want to know how far I've run, I need to know where the starting point, my reference point is. How  far I run is relative to my starting point, my reference point. Let's have a little race. We are all going to run for 5 seconds. Everyone needs to start at the starting line, but I don't want anyone to run the same direction.  (Have a 5 second race. Measure how far everyone has run. Make sure everyone writes down their distances.)

Now with the information we have, we can figure out your AVERAGE SPEED- the average of how fast you were  going for the time that you ran. (Of course, the K4 won't get this. But he will like to know how fast he ran.). But from that information, can you tell where you ran to? No. To figure that out, you need to have direction.

Everybody back to the starting line. This time we are all going to run the same way.  From my compass, I can tell that the direction we are running is _______. (If you don't have a compass, give a good guess using the sun's position for guidance.). (Run the race again. Record everyone's distances, time and direction.)
With this information we can tell where we ran. That is VELOCITY. VELOCITY = speed plus direction.

Let's go inside and figure out our average speed and velocity.

RESOURCES:


Worksheet to go with Average Speed and Velocity activity

.

Good explanation of motion, speed, velocity, displacement and acceleration.

Experiment: How Fast Do Objects Accelerate to Earth

Mountains of Playdough

Earth science is exciting! Studying about mountain formation is fascinating. But how to keep everyone engaged- that's the question. So instead of just reading about how mountains are formed, we formed them ourselves out of playdough.

To begin with, I needed a lot of playdough. I multiplied the recipe by six, then divided the playdough into four balls and colored three of them different colors. We rolled out the balls into layers and cut them into four parts, because I have four kids doing this activity.

Next I assigned each kid a different type of mountain. One made the folded mountains, like our Blue Ridge Mountains. These were made by exerting  inward pressure on both sides of the slab. 

Another made block thrust mountains by cutting the play dough into three pieces and the outer two push on the inner block causing it to rise as a unit.

This is the dome mountain made by magma building up underneath the earth and pushing it upward.

The volcano mountain doesn't look that great. The orange is the magma that came out of the vent and solidified on top.

This is a mountain caused by the subduction of one plate under another.

This activity is not rocket science, and it's not art, but it did engage all the age groups and help them remember how mountains are formed.

Resources:

cream of tarter playdough recipe

Earth and the Lithosphere

Another week of science. Yeah!

This week we are on Module 6, Earth and the Lithosphere. I am using as my core text Exploring Creation with Physical Science by Jay Wile. This year I have kids in every level. Is it possible for us to do science together? That is the challenge I have taken on.

Schedule:

Monday:   Lithosphere and plate tectonics
Tuesday:Mountain Formation

Wednesday: Volcanoes

Thursday: Earthquakes

Friday: Catch-up day

This chart shows my effort to teach all my levels at once. Activities referenced in the chart are listed in the resource section below.

	Kindergarten	Elementary	Middle School	High School
Lithosphere, Structure of  the earth	earth layers  coloring sheet, magnetic fields activity. Magic  School Bus "Inside the Earth"	SC Landforms earth layers coloring sheet, geomag  comic book, magnetic fields activity, Magic  School Bus "Inside the Earth"	SC Landforms earth layers coloring sheet, geomagnatism comic book, magnetic fields activity, Magic  School Bus "Inside the Earth"	Lithosphere  facts, SC Landforms, geomagnatism comic book, magnetic fields activity
Plate  Tectonics	plate tectonics coloring pages	plate tectonics worksheets	plate tectonics worksheets	plate tectonics worksheets
Earthquakes	Bill Nye Earthquakes	Deadliest Earthquakes Nova Bill Nye Earthquakes	Deadliest Earthquakes Nova, Bill Nye Earthquakes	Deadliest Earthquakes Nova, Bill Nye Earthquakes
Volcanoes	Magic School Bus Blows Its Top	Deadliest Volcanoes, Magic School Bus Blows Its Top	Deadliest Volcanoes, Magic School Bus Blows Its Top	Deadliest Volcanoes
Mountain Formation	Mountain formation activity	Mountain formation activity	Mountain formation activity	Mountain formation activity

Resources:


magnetic fields activities

Bill Nye- Earthquakes

easy earth layers coloring sheet

coloring pages plate tectonics and earthquakes


earth layers coloring page

7-12 grade USGS resources
comic book about geomagnatism


Lithosphere facts from science daily

volcano 101 national geographic video

plate tectonics facts, worksheets, quizes

South Carolina Landforms

The Magic School Bus Blows its Top

Nova full length video: Deadliest Volcanoes

This is terrific! If you only watch one video, watch this one. You could probably get it from the library if the link goes dead.

earthquake links from NOVA

Plate Tectonics video

Find the fault interactive activity

How Mountains are Made

How Mountains are made worksheets

Module 5 and 4: The hydrosphere and the wonder of water

I'm rearranging the order of the book (again) to make the flow of ideas a little better. We have already covered clouds and cloud formation, so we will skip that part and talk about the water cycle and what is so unusual about water. At the end of the week we will talk about groundwater, because that will bridge nicely into the lithosphere.

Schedule:

Monday: Hydrosphere and water cycle. Watch Magic School Bus and do worksheets on water cycle. Module 5

Tuesday: Properties of water experiments and worksheets. Module 4

Wednesday: Properties of water experiments and worksheets. Bending water experiment.

Thursday: Glacier video

Friday: Understanding groundwater video. Build an aquifer in a cup.

Notes:

The aquifer in a cup is a great activity.

The groundwater video is a little hard to understand.

We did this experiment from the properties of water link in the resource section below, comparing the heat properties of different liquids.

We heated 40 ml of alcohol, 40 ml of oil and 40 ml of water and graphed the temperature while they were being heated to the boiling point and then cooled. We did this using a vernier stainless steel thermometer and a go link plugged into the computer and graphed with logger lite software. The kids loved it. They could actually see the difference between the two liquids in their ability to heat up hold heat.Unfortunately, when I heated the oil, I lost my heat sensor.

This is what alcohol looked like.

This is what water looked like.

This is oil. You can tell right where I burned out my temperature sensor.

Resources:

The Magic School Bus Ups and Downs

Resources for all ages on water and the water cycle

Activities and coloring pages from the EPA on the water cycle\

I really like this link because it ties the properties of water to the hydrosphere.

Properties of water experiments and worksheets

Bending water with a comb experiment

Glacier video from pbs kids

Wonderful explanation of the properties of water part 1

Understanding Groundwater parts 1 and 2

Groundwater activity: make an aquifer in a cup

water cycle worksheet

Worksheets and quiz on the water cycle

Bill Nye and the Water Cycle

Magic School Bus and Wet all Over

The hydrosphere for younger children

Module 8: Weather and It's Prediction

Here we are. Sunday night and I'm still working on lesson plans... The material doesn't look that hard. I will probably ask the study questions as we go along rather than assigning them as homework. Check out the cyberspace videos for the younger set. 

Notes:

The book is unclear as to where lightning starts. The flash actually starts at the ground first and travels to the cloud. See Nova video.

My grandfather, who was a farmer, told me that if there is no dew on the ground, it will probably rain. I have found this to be a pretty accurate indicator.

If your weather data collecting is incomplete and/or inadequate you can get the data you need from the weather data link listed below. Kids tend not to collect the most accurate data:) 

Schedule: 

Keep recording weather all days. See weather chart in previous post.

 Monday: All reading from Exploring Creation with Physical Science. Read pp. 181-189. Resources Precipitation video and hail video.

 Tuesday: Read pp.190-197

 Wednesday: Study questions 1-13. Cyberchase video.

 Thursday: Study questions 14-24. Hunt for the Supertwister.

 Friday: Experiment 8.2 using weather data to predict the weather.

Resources:

interactive anatomy of Katrina

links to sites containing past weather data

links to lesson plans, printables, experiments etc. on weather

how to predict the weather without a forcast

using past weather data to forecast the weather

great game that teaches how to predict the weather using weather maps and data

Best lightning video from Discovery

What makes thunder?

Precipitation

How hail is formed

PBS Cyberchase episodes that have to do with weather

Watch full cyberchase video about tracking storms

Watch Nova's Hunt for the Super Twister full episode

Link to Nova short film on lightning

Weather Module 7

This week I'd like to do fewer videos and more reading and hands on. We've already talked about clouds somewhat, so the first order of business is to set up our own weather station. We will make our own instruments.  I think the kids will learn more by reading the instruments themselves rather than getting all the information off the web. Here is our schedule.

Monday: Pages 157-161 on clouds. Make barometer and rain gauge.
Tuesday: pp 161-165 Earth's thermal energy.
Wednesday: 165-171 Latitude/Longitude, wind patterns Make weather vane
Thursday:171-176 Air Masses
Friday: Study questions


Resources

Blank weather chart

vocabulary

make your own weather instruments

US wind map

Estimate the wind speed without an anemomeeter

A blank weather chart I created. Enough space for 2 weeks

Latitude and Longitude game

Global Wind Pattern visualization

Six Major Wind Belts

Latitude and Longitude

Air Masses

Module 3,7: Weather

We are taking spring break Wednesday-Friday. So this is a light week. The Magic School Bus is one of my favorite science shows for the younger ones.

Monday: Soda can implosion. This is an awesome demonstration of air pressure for any age. Start reading chapter on weather. Take picture of sky and add to cloud atlas. Use NOAA sky chart as a reference.
Tuesday: Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm. Younger ones have library books on weather. 9th grader reads chapter.

Resources:
soda can implosion

Get the Magic School Bus

Kicks up a Storm from the library. Great for the younger kids. I had to order the tape from Amazon.

NOAA sky chart

Module 3: Atmosphere

To be honest, I am still struggling with the way Wile has organized the whole air/atmosphere/weather units. I am going to rearrange things a little bit here, and instead of covering atmospheric pressure first, I am going to cover the layers of the atmosphere and from there go to weather which will include atmospheric pressure.

I was gone all weekend, so will finish the lesson plans for the rest of the week tonight. This should get us through the day.

Monday: pg. 62-76 layers of the atmosphere. Watch videos of the layers of the atmosphere. Draw in notebook the layers and what occurs in each layer. Note that no other resource I've come across calls this the homosphere.
Tuesday: Aurora video from NASA.
Wednesday: plot where to see auroras on map. See Dancing in the Night Sky activity
Thursday: make a magnetometer to measure solar storms. See magnetometer activity.
Friday: Notebooking activity. Take picture of sky and note the kind of clouds. Do this every day for two weeks. Watch Bill Nye the Science Guy video on the atmosphere. We got ours from the library.

AFTER REMARKS

Bill Nye Atmosphere was not as good as his other videos. I wouldn't watch it again.

Dancing in the Night sky worked out well, along with the mapping  aurora activity from NASA.

Structure of the atmosphere was worth watching.

RESOURCES


NASA solar storm math activity


make a magnetometer-measure solar storms- NASA


Links to atmosphere and weather lessons, worksheets and videos

video and interactive links to the atmosphere. Nova segments

NASA links on the atmosphere

Video on the structure of the atmosphere.

Great Video on Auroras from NASA

Activity to go with NASA video "Dancing in the Night Sky"

Module 2: Air

This module covers humidity, air composition, greenhouse gasses, ozone and air pollution. I would like to spend more time humidity, and broaden it to include dew point, and spend less time on greenhouse gases ozone and air pollution.

Schedule
Monday: Watch videos on humidity and dew point, and do the activity to find the dew point and the activity to make a cloud in a bottle. Record activities in notebook.
Tuesday: Do the activities to model and find the relative humidity in the classroom. Put worksheets in notebook.
Wednesday: Read the section on the composition of air and check out the discovery of nitrogen site.Draw a diagram showing the composition of air in notebook.
Thursday: Read about the greenhouse effect and global warming. Do lab on greenhouse effect. Fill out lab report and put in notebook. Find lab sheets here
Friday: Read and talk about ozone. Using a rope, demonstrate the difference between a high energy wave and a short energy wave. See resource activities on ozone. Go to the air pollution site and watch how they have been tracking the amount of pollutants in the air for the past 10 years.

You will notice I don't spend much time testing. We talk and discuss the subject so much I know what they understand.

Resources

Air- Humidity and Dew point
Video: relative humidity and dew point. Good explanations of the difference.

Very good video on humidity and dew point. Has a couple simple experiments on finding the dew point and making a cloud in a bottle.

 

Worksheet on how to find the relative humidity in your classroom/home, and making models to show visibly the difference between cold and warm air and the amount of moisture they hold.

humidity in the air worksheets

Air Composition 

Great site on the discovery of the different components of air. 

composition of air/discovery of nitrogen

Ozone 

Good explanation of ozone with related activities

ozone site

Air Pollution

Video on how pollutants have been tracked for 10 years, showing that the clean air act of 1999 really has improved our air quality.

air pollution viedeo

Module One: Atoms and Molecules, Units of Measurement

Module One is an introduction to matter and measurement. This will be review for the older students.The preschooler will sit in with us as we watch the movies and do the experiments. Everyone will have their own notebook to record what we did for the day, whether it's a video, worksheet or experiment. Even the preschooler will draw pictures and write simple sentences of what we are doing. To be honest, the preschooler is actually more on a kindergarten level. Below is my schedule for next week, with the resources listed below the schedule. We'll see how it goes.

Schedule
Monday: Introduce atoms with Bill Nye the Science Guy video. Build a model of an atom using a atom modeling kit. Write about what you did and put in notebook.
Tuesday: Electrolysis experiment. Use lab report template and put report in notebook.
Wednesday: ECPS pp. 7-17,  Experiment 1.2 Cubits and Fingers. Use lab report and put in notebook.
Thursday: Metric Conversion Worksheet
Friday: Concentration experiment. If I dilute the vinegar, will it still react to baking powder? Observe the reaction of baking powder to different concentrations of vinegar. Use water as a control.
Steps to a good experiment


Resources

Videos


Bill Nye the Science Guy- Atoms 1/2

Bill Nye the Science Guy- Atoms 2/2

Experiments

This is basically the same experiment as found on page 2 in Exploring Creation with Physical Science but it has better explanations and includes instructions for capturing the hydrogen and oxygen and for more advanced students, the mathematical calculations that go with it.
Electrolysis Experiment

Worksheets and Online Quizzes

Metric Conversion Worksheet

Interactive Quiz on Converting Metric Length

Worksheets and ppts covering middle school science

Online games and videos on atoms

Lapbooking and Notebooking


Great lapbook and notebook ideas for atoms.

Chemistry unit study. Includes scientist biographies

Lab report template

Notebook pages on atoms

The Skeleton

When I teach science, I need a skeleton. Something that gives strength and cohesiveness to all the aspects of the branch of science we are studying. Usually  this is the textbook.

The skeleton this year will be Exploring Creation with Physical Science by Wile. I am not a big Wile fan, but I need a book. To me, the book is the jumping off point of the course. It is just the beginning. To the book we will add field trips, experiments, notebooking, lapbooking, activities and whatever else is needed to engage the kids minds and help them understand and remember.