Apologia and WA: Physical Science Forces Lab Activities

Years ago I taught when I taught Physical Science at another private school, my colleagues regularly reviewed the entire science curriculum in terms of the AAAS Benchmarks and NSTA standards, now incorporated in to The Next Generation Science Standards.  Most of Physical Science is an introduction to Chemistry and Physics.  The Physics teacher, Charles, felt that the kids should be well grounded in classic Newtonian Physics in the Physical Science course along with the foundations of electricity and magnetism.  So, my Physical Science course is evenly divided between Kiddie Chemistry and Kiddie Physics. (Apologia also has an Earth Science component.)  I end up spending a great deal of time on Motion and Forces because kids will need these ideas for Physics and Earth Science.

Now for the activities.  My references are Apologia's Physical Science text, the Middle School Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics, McDougall-Littell's Physical Science, and NSTA's Take Home Physics.  McDougall has an introduction to Forces with two activities, Popping Ping Pong Balls and Take Off!  The ping pong ball mini lab demonstrates the relation ship between force, mass, and acceleration.  Take off! shows how forces work in pairs or the idea of action reaction.

Both Apologia and McDougall have activities with a paper plate or pie plate and marbles to investigate Motion and Force.  (I chalk the marble.). Apologia uses this lesson as an example of Newton's First Law and McDougall uses it to demonstrate circular motion.

If you have not done the ball drops, now is the time!  We drop and time several different balls: golf, bouncy, tennis, foam, etc from the same height and time the drop with a stop watch.  The objects should land at the same time, owing to gravity.  My kids discuss potential sources of error, such as the lag between the drop and hitting the timer.  The more ball drops, the better to see that the time is roughly the same.

Next up are a series of lesson which demonstrate more Physics principles.