Unit 4: May the forces be with you. Or without you.

Summary:

Unit 4 introduces students to position, velocity, acceleration, and Newton's three laws of motion. Students engage with the materials through hands-on explorations, generation and analysis of their own data, engineering and design of a Rube Goldberg machine, and more. Students will ultimately demonstrate their understanding of these topics when they create a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) lesson plan that focuses on one aspect of this unit and conduct analyses of obstacle courses such as American Ninja Warrior or Wipeout. All materials have relevance to a central motivating question and connections to previous units on energy, waves, density, and buoyancy are regularly introduced.

This unit follows a familiar format compared to previous units. Students complete (approximately) weekly reflections about their subject-specific learning, create science journals for all lab activities, and complete a short "Scientist Spotlight" to showcase a diversity of scientists who have all overcome some challenge in pursuit of their scientific passion. Quantitative skills are again reinforced and include interpreting direct/inverse proportionality; calculating and interpreting mean and standard deviation; inserting a best fit line to data and interpreting the results as physically meaningful from governing equations; using simple equations to make predictions and draw conclusions about data; and performing unit conversions.

Most of these materials work well as standalone experiences if the entire unit can't be completed. If all four units are completed, then plan for this material to take about a month of class time. Materials that can be skipped without loss of continuity are noted throughout.

Motivating question:

Competition obstacle courses like American Ninja Warrior, Wipeout, and The Floor is Lava are the human equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine: getting from one place to another with the most challenging and complicated path possible. If you are given an opportunity to compete in one of these, how will you strategize your ideal motion and approach for the various obstacles to maximize your chances of completing the course?

Time for this Unit:

This unit is designed to take about four weeks of class time (one third of a typical semester course). If all units are completed without any of the extension activities, then plan for 10-12.5 hours of class time. Extension activities and labs add an additional 5 - 5.5 hours of class time. Materials that can be skipped without loss of continuity are noted throughout.

Learning Outcomes:

Overall learning outcomes for this unit:

• Analyze and Synthesize Physical Phenomena: Students will skillfully integrate data analysis techniques to generate and interpret position and velocity graphs. They will also critically assess and make predictions about the interconnections between position, velocity, acceleration and slope.
• Apply Complex Concepts to Explain Natural Laws: Students will connect foundational concepts from different units to skillfully integrate energy, density, and motion principles to explain Newton's Laws.
• Embrace Applied Learning with Passion: Through constructing plate movement models and designing energy-transfer machines, students will demonstrate enthusiastic engagement and emotional investment in applying theoretical knowledge to practical contexts.
• Synthesize and Communicate: Students will expertly synthesize NGSS principles with motion and forces concepts, enabling them to evaluate real-world scenarios like obstacle course runs and effectively communicate scientific principles to diverse audiences.
• Cultivate Lifelong Curiosity: Nurturing an appreciation for fundamental scientific elegance, students will be inspired to sustain lifelong curiosity, fostering ongoing enthusiasm for exploring and understanding the natural world.

Overview:

Traditional physical science classes start with the topics of Unit 4 (motion and forces), but in this course we save it for last. With this arrangement, students are constantly challenged to note connections between previous units about energy, waves, and density while building toward a more fundamental understanding of the fundamental laws of motion that Newton formalized. Students proceed through the activities, labs, and class discussions by making observations, asking questions, performing analyses, collecting data, and generating system maps before a final culminating summative assignment to create a NGSS lesson plan for an activity in this unit. All tasks in this unit are building toward a deep understanding of the Unit's motivating question.

Unit 4.1: What is where? (105 min, plus an additional 60-90 min if the extension activities are completed): What is "where"? The location of anything is determined by its position, but any "position" is relative and needs a frame of reference. In this module, students will track and measure simple trajectories of chosen objects to graph, and compare graphs of the objects' changing position, velocity, and acceleration as they move.

Unit 4.2: Why do things change their motion? (150 min): Why do objects change their motion? In this unit, students discover force types and the connection between force and acceleration. In an engineering and design project, students will construct a vertically-launching rocket and analyze its motion. Armed with this knowledge, students will "derive" Newton's laws of motion, make connections to energy transformations, and better understand a collision as a transfer of energy that occurs because two objects exert forces on each other.

Unit 4.3: Nature and machine: implementation of forces (240 min, plus an additional 240 min if the extension lab is completed): How do forces cause Earth's crust to collide and divide? Students plan, design, and construct a model of plate tectonics to further develop a concept that they began to investigate back in Unit 3. Then, students plan, engineer, construct, analyze, and synthesize the concepts of this unit (position, motion, forces) by designing and building a Rube Goldberg machine.

Unit 4.4: Unit synthesis and lesson plan (120 min - 240+ min): In this final unit for the course, students apply their understanding of motion and forces concepts to: 1. Create an NGSS lesson plan for an activity that they have completed in Unit 4; and 2. Conduct analyses of obstacle courses such as American Ninja Warrior or Wipeout. Writing engaging and relevant introductions is treated as a focus point in pre-activity class discussions. Students also return to the course goals they set for themselves at the beginning of the course and complete the final Scientist Spotlight: YOU are the scientist!