Matter and Motion - Pendulums and Potential Energy

The last few days have had us looking at pendulums. Through these activities, we can begin to hit our "I can" statements of:

• I can distinguish between kinetic and potential energy.
• I can classify all forms of energy as either kinetic or potential.
• I can defend how motion is affected by speed and direction.
• I can graph an object’s position and speed as a function of time.

The structure of this activity was a little different than previous ones. The first few hands-on activities are what we sometimes call "recipe science." This means that learners are guided through the activity in a procedure that lays out all of the steps that need to be completed...in order! While this is great for gaining knowledge, we also need to make sure our learners are able to create and design their own experiments by the end of 6th grade!

That said, the lab report given to students was noticeably different. You can view the lab report here:

http://tinyurl.com/zko2dkq

Learners were tasked to create their own lab setup to help them answer the following Guiding Questions:

Does the length of the chain matter when swinging on a pendulum? (or "swing")

Does the mass of the object swinging cause the swing to move faster or slower?

Each group tackled this task differently. Some create elaborate contraptions to help them change their variables quickly and easily:

Hopefully the weather will hold a a few more weeks so that we can go test our knowledge on the playground!!