A comprehensive course that continues the science adventure in physics under Newtons work on the three laws of motion. Students get a crash-course in projectile motion as they build g-force accelerometers, float hovercraft on both land and water, build a rocket car, and measure the Earths magnetic pulse.

Step 1. Click Here to download your copy of the Ultimate Science Curriculum Forces & Motion Vol. 1 Student Guidebook. To download the Parent/Teacher Guidebook, Click Here.

Step 2. Watch the videos that go with it below.

Lesson #1: Fast Ball

Overview: Gravity is an acceleration. That is, it affects all objects equally. Gravity accelerates objects at 9.8m/s². Acceleration is a rate of change of speed or, in other words, how fast the speed is changing. We’ll get some good practice with calculations and observations as we complete this lesson.

What to Learn: Students will learn that the velocity of an object is the rate of change of its position, and that acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. They will solve problems involving distance, time, speed and gravity.

Materials

ball
pencil
stopwatch
yardstick (or tape measure)

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Lesson #2: Tracking Treads

Overview: Now let’s talk about the other ever-present force on this Earth, and that’s friction. Friction is the force between one object rubbing against another object. Friction is what makes things slow down. Without friction things would just keep moving unless they hit something else. Without friction, you would not be able to walk. Your feet would have nothing to push against and they would just slide backward all the time like you’re doing the moon walk.

What to Learn: Today you get to discover how friction is a complicated interaction between pressure and the type of materials that are touching one another.

Materials

shoes (about 5 different ones)
board, or a tray, or a large book at least 15 inches long and no more than 2 feet long.
ruler or yardstick
protractor
pencil
partner

Lesson #3: Stick and Slip

Overview: Friction is everywhere! Imagine what the world would be like without friction! Everything you do, from catching baseballs to eating hamburgers, to putting on shoes, friction is a part of it. If you take a quick look at friction, it is quite a simple concept of two things rubbing together.

What to Learn: When you take a closer look at friction, it’s really quite complex. What kind of surfaces are rubbing together? How much of the surfaces are touching? And what’s the deal with this stick and slip thing anyway? Friction is a concept that many scientists are spending a lot of time on. Understanding friction is very important in making engines and machines run more efficiently and safely.

Materials

magnets (2, business-card sized)
fingers

Lesson #4: Rocket Car

Overview: Let’s take a good look at Newton’s laws of motion while making something that flies off in both directions. This experiment will pop a cork out of a bottle and make the cork fly 20 to 30 feet, while the vehicle moves in the other direction! This is an outdoor experiment. Be careful with this, as the cork comes out with a good amount of force. (Don’t point it at anyone or anything, even yourself!)

What to Learn: You’ll learn how to solve problems involving distance, time, and average speed.

Materials

toy car
baking soda
vinegar
tape
container with a tight-fitting lid (I don’t recommend glass containers… see if you can find a plastic one like a film canister or a mini-M&M container.)
measuring tape
stopwatch

Lesson #5: Newtons Wagon

Overview: The natural state of objects is to follow a straight line. In fact, Newton’s First Law of Motion states that objects in motion will tend to stay in motion unless they are acted upon by an external force. A force is a push or a pull, like pulling a wagon or pushing a car. Gravity is also a force, but it’s a one-way force that attracts things to each another.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion is for objects experiencing unbalanced forces. The first law, usually called the law of inertia, says that if all the forces acting on an object are balanced then the object is in equilibrium and does not accelerate. The object can either be at rest or in motion, but not accelerating (the object can be at a constant speed and traveling in a straight line). Objects not in equilibrium experience unbalanced forces, which causes them to accelerate. Acceleration is a change in speed, direction, or both.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that for every interaction, there’s a pair of forces acting on the objects, which are equal in size and opposite in direction. (Want to know a secret? Forces always come in pairs!)

What to Learn The way to change how something is moving is to give it a push or a pull. The size of the change is related to the strength, or the amount of "force," of the push or pull.

Materials

friends
rocks
wagon
balloon
fishing line
tape
stopwatch
measuring tape

Lesson #6: Ta-Da!

Overview: Ever wonder how magicians work their magic? This experiment is worthy of the stage with a little bit of practice on your end. If you believe in the laws of physics, particularly Newton’s laws, then this experiment will work every time.

Materials

plastic cup
hardcover book
toilet paper tube
several different objects like a ball that is smaller than the cup opening, but larger than the toilet paper tube

Lesson #7: Chicken and Clam

Overview: Next time you watch a car race, notice the wheels. Are they solid metal discs, or do they have holes drilled through the rims? I came up with this somewhat silly, but incredibly powerful quick science demonstration to show my university students how a good set of rims could really make a difference on the racetrack (with all other things being equal).

What to Learn: You’re going to learn about inertia, what it is and how to measure it and its effects.

Materials

clam chowder (1 can)
chicken broth (1 can)
long table
books to prop up one end of the table so it becomes a long ramp
optional: different kinds of cans of soup (note you must have the two mentioned above)

Lesson #8: Impulse and Momentum

Overview: Any object that is moving has momentum. Momentum is the product of the mass and the velocity. Larger and heavier objects will have a higher momentum than lighter and smaller objects.

What to Learn: You’ll discover how to describe the velocity describe of an object by specifying both direction and speed as well as calculate momentum.

Materials

handful of coins (at least two of each)
pillow
wall
wagon
skateboard

Lesson #9: Driveway Races

Overview We know from earlier work that acceleration due to gravity is a uniform or constant rate of acceleration at 9.8 m/s², or 32 ft/s². However, if something is rolling down a ramp, it is still pulled by gravity, but at a portion of it, or not the full “strength.”

What to Learn In this experiment, learn how changes in velocity can be changes in speed, direction, or both.

Materials

ball (hard and smooth like a golf ball, racquetball, pool ball, soccer ball, etc.)
tape or chalk
driveway (slightly sloping – you can also use a board propped on one end as a ramp)
timer or stopwatch
pencil
measuring tape or yard stick

Lesson #10: Gyro Wheel

Overview: Gyroscopes defy human intuition, common sense, and even appear to defy gravity. You’ll find them in aircraft navigation instruments, games of Ultimate Frisbee, fast bicycles, street motorcycles, toy yo-yos, and the Hubble Space Telescope. Gyroscopes are used at the university level to demonstrate the principles of angular momentum, which is what we’re going to learn about here. What to Learn: You get to discover how velocity, acceleration, and momentum work together. Materials

bicycle wheel (detached from bicycle – the front wheel is pretty easy to detach)
rope (about 2-3 feet)
office chair

Lesson #11: Downhill Race

Overview: The force that is acting on an object is equal to its mass times the amount of acceleration acting on it at any given time. Now the thing to be careful of when trying to calculate this is that this force that is being used to calculate this is the net force. Remember from earlier lessons that net force is all of the forces being added together (in the same axis). When you add up the net force of you standing still, you would take the force of gravity (-490 N) and the normal force (490 N). Add them together and the net force is 0 N. If a = F/m, then a = 0 N/50 kg, and the acceleration = 0 m/s². So remember that F=ma works, but only when the F is actually F_NET.

What to Learn: You may notice that when things move they rarely move at the same speed all the time. Especially when you drive, you can see right away that your speed is constantly changing. When your speed changes, you are accelerating. You can be either speeding up or slowing down. The type of acceleration we deal with, especially in introductory physics, is uniform acceleration, which means that it is accelerating at a constant rate.

Materials

sloping surface(such as a driveway, a board propped on one end as a ramp, or a table propped on one end)
toy car or ball (to roll)
stopwatch
pen
tape
block or textbook

Lesson #12: Net Forces

Overview: The net force (F_net) is when you add up all of the forces on something and see what direction the overall force pushes in. The word “net,” in this case, is like net worth or net income. It’s a mathematical concept of what is left after everything that applies is added and subtracted.

What to Learn: Today you get to learn how unbalanced forces cause changes in velocity.

Materials

rope (about 3 feet long)
friend
sense of caution (Be careful with this. Don’t pull too hard and please don’t let go of the rope. This is fun but you can get hurt if you get silly.)

Lesson #14: Bearings

Overview: You’re going to play with different kinds of bearings: Some only allow movement in one direction, like roller bearings, while others allow movement in two directions, like ball bearings.

What to Learn: Students will learn how scientists and engineers reduce friction in machines.

Materials

12-inch square board
10 dowels (You can also use or round, not hexagonal, pencils.)
handful of marbles (at least 20)

Lesson #15: G-Force

Overview: Have you ever been riding in a really fast car and you almost feel “pushed” back into your seat because of how fast you start? Or been thrown forward when someone had to slam on the brakes? How about pushed to the side when the car took a fast turn? So … who pushed you? That’s what this lab is all about.

What to Learn: You’ll learn about centrifugal force, centripetal acceleration and g-force, and how to tell the difference between them.

Materials

bucket
water
outdoor area
clear tubing (about 12-18″ long)
nylon or metal barbed union that fits inside the tubing
soda bottle (empty)
wine cork
string

Lesson #16: Detecting the Gravitational Field

Overview: Ok, sort of a silly experiment I admit. But here’s what we’re going for – there is an invisible force acting on you and the ball. Things don’t change the way they are moving unless a force acts on them. When you jump, the force that we call gravity pulls you back to Earth. When you throw a ball, something invisible acts on the ball, forcing it to slow down, turn around, and come back down. Without that force field, you and your ball would be heading out to space right now!

What to Learn: Everywhere you go, the acceleration due to gravity will be the same. I mean that it will work the same on Earth, on the moon, on Jupiter, etc. For a long time, we knew there was something pulling us down (towards the center of the earth), but we didn’t know all that much about how it worked. We thought it acted differently on different objects. For example, we thought it would make heavier objects fall at a faster rate than lighter objects (it would make a cannon ball fall faster than an apple). While we know that if we dropped a cannon ball on our foot and an apple on our foot, the cannon ball would definitely hurt more, it wouldn’t necessarily fall faster!

Materials

two different-sized objects
tape measure or meter stick
partner

Lesson #17: Hovercraft

Overview: Students will learn how to build a real model hovercraft! This is a great way to end the unit by making something they can see accelerate, defy gravity, and reduce friction by floating on a cushion of air.

What to Learn: Hovercraft transport people and their stuff across ice, grass, swamp, water, and land. Also known as the Air Cushioned Vehicle (ACV), these machines use air to greatly reduce the sliding friction between the bottom of the vehicle (the skirt) and the ground. This is a great example of how lubrication works – most people think of oil as the only way to reduce sliding friction, but gases work well if done right.

In this case, the readily available air is shoved downward by the hover motor and the skirt traps the air and keeps it inside, thus lifting the vehicle slightly. The thruster motor’s job is to propel the craft forward. Most hovercraft use either two motors (one on each side) for steering, or just one with a rudder that can deflect the flow (as your project does).

The first hovercraft were thought about in the 1800s, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that real ones were first tested. Today, the military uses them for patrolling hard-to-drive areas, scientists use them for swamp research studies, and businesses use them to transport toys and food across rough and icy areas. Scientists are already planning future ACVs to use magnetic levitation in addition to the air power… but it’s still on the drawing board.

Materials

skewer
popsicle stick
straw
Styrofoam cup (16 oz. – note: waxed cups won’t work)
Styrofoam carryout container (The one in the video is 5.5” square and 3” high when closed)
Styrofoam meat tray (The one in the video is 10” x 12” x 1” – but yours does not have to be this exact size – try different sizes by asking for clean ones from your butcher.)
DC motors (two 3-volt – make sure they are high speed)
propellers (2, in the video they are 3” in diameter – check with your local hobby store for a variety to test)
9V battery clip with wires
9V battery (a good brand like Duracell or Energizer)
9V battery holder (looks like a “C” – or you can use tape to attach the battery to your hovercraft)
wires (a couple extras – like speaker wire, alligator clips, etc.)
SPST switch
ruler
box cutter (with adult help)
wire strippers (or scissors)
tape
pen
string (small piece)
hot glue gun
glue sticks

Lesson #18: The Electromagnetic Field

Overview: When you stare at a compass, the needle that indicates the magnetic field from the Earth appears to stand still, but we’re going to find how it fluctuates and moves by creating a super-sensitive instrument using everyday materials (for comparison, you would spend over $100 for a scientific instrument that does the same thing).

What to Learn: Today you get to learn how to amplify tiny pulses in the Earth’s magnetic field using a laser and a couple of magnets. It’s a very cool experiment, but it does take patience to make it work right. Deep breath … are you ready?

Materials

index card or scrap of cardboard
2 small mirrors
2 rare earth magnets
nylon filament (thin nylon thread works, too)
4 doughnut magnets
laser pointer (any kind will work – even the cheap key-chain type)
clean glass jar (pickle, jam, mayo, etc… any kind of jar that’s heavy so it won’t knock over easily)
wooden spring-type clothespin
hot glue gun, scissors and tape

Want More Science Activities?

These videos are samples from my online eScience Learning program. Its a complete science program for K-12. Plus, its self-guiding, so they can do it on their own.

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Thank You!

Thanks for the privilege as serving as your coach and guide in your science journey. May these videos bring you much excitement and curiosity in your learning adventure!

~Aurora

Supercharged Science

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