Teacher Notes for Work and Energy
Lesson Plans || Learning Outcomes and Activities || Teacher Notes || Labs
Unit Overview
We estimate this to be a 13-day unit. The unit blends concepts of work, energy, and power with the mathematics associated with these concepts. An additional day should be added for an exam. There is one primary goal in this unit. It could be worded in a variety of ways. We have chosen the following wording.
Whatever energy is, it is a quantity that you can keep track of. And by keeping track of energy - how it changes form and how it enters and exits a system - you can predict the answers to questions like How high will the object rise?, How fast will the object be moving?, How far will the object skid?, etc.
Much of the instruction, the labs, the activities, the problems, etc. of this unit could be attached to this broad implication of the law of energy conservation. Whether the student is constructing a work-energy bar chart, performing a lab investigation, or solving a problem on a CalcPad problem set, they are keeping track of energy to determine how it changes form and/or crosses the boundary of the system.
Concepts First
There is a very intentional effort in this unit plan to build a strong foundational understanding of the concepts and relationships associated with work and energy. While there are a few calculations of work, power, and kinetic and potential energy during the first eight days, the majority of the first eight days is devoted to understanding how to keep track of energy. The last five days of the unit are filled with applications of this understanding, mostly to the analysis of physical situations to predict a final height, speed, or distance. There is a CalcPad problem set for each of the last five days; the problems in the problem sets get progressively more difficult from day to day. During these last five days, a portion of most days is devoted to a short lab or a short conceptual review.
Marble Energy Labs vs. Lab Test
We left two labs out of the Lesson Plans that are low-tech (or even no-tech) and have great value as inquiry experiences. They are Marble Energy 1 and Marble Energy 2. They could easily be combined into a single lab. They work best when used early in the learning cycle on work and energy; inserting them around Day 3 or 4 would work well.
As an alternative to these labs, we included a "Lab Test" in the Day 3 Lesson Plan. The Lab Test is like any test in that the teacher provides no hints, no advice, no direction, and no help. Student lab groups are 100% on their own to address the purpose of the lab.
All decisions are left to the lab groups. Lab groups cannot communicate with other lab groups; it is after all a "test". Use of a lab test provides the teacher a reasonably good assessment of where students are at with respect to solving a lab problem. We do recommend the following: Every student receives a copy of the
Lab Test and must complete it from beginning to end. Presumably members of the group will be working together on the test so all copies should reflect the group's thinking and decision-making. Collecting a copy from each group member insures that all members participate. Lab groups should be instructed to staple all the Lab Tests together with the one that is to be graded on the top. Grading just the top copy reduces the amount of grading. Quickly checking that all other copies are complete insures that all members of the group receive the same grade.
Our
Push the Plow Science Reasoning Activity was based on these labs and the Lab Test. This five-part activity addresses student's ability to understand the design of an experiment, to identify evidence-based claims, to use proportional reasoning skills to determine relationships between variables, and to predict the result of additional trials. Push the Plow would make an effective addition to the unit.
Roller Coaster Physics
Students love the connection between roller coaster and energy concepts. We do too! The
Roller Coaster Model simulation (Day 6) is one of our means of hilighting the connection. There is a freely-downloadable
Student Activity Sheet for use with the simulation. And there is a
Concept Checker that can be used as a follow-up check for understanding. We recommend all three.
We have included a second activity in the unit plan that focuses exclusively upon the physics of roller coasters -
Modeling Roller Coasters (Day 7). This activity is from our Science Reasoning Center and is probably our most intricate activity in that entire section. The activity has a strong alignment to the NGSS but would be equally useful for any classroom. There are five parts to the activity with each part having a different set of tasks to complete.
Work and Kinetic Energy
One simulation that we did not reference in our Lesson Plans is the
Work and Kinetic Energy simulation. The simulation depicts the effect of a force upon the kinetic energy of an object. It is accompanied by two different freely downloadable student exercises. We recommend the second exercise titled
Work and Kinetic Energy. The exercise guides students through a collection of studies in which they explore the effect of an isolated variable upon the motion. The initial velocity of the object, the direction of the force, and the presence or absence of friction are the variables that are explored.
The "Honors" Difference
When you compare the Lesson Plans and the Learning Outcomes for our
on-level Physics course to our Honors Physics course, it may at first look the same. A deeper dive in just about every unit will reveal that the Physics is much the same but the difficulty level is significantly different. In this unit (and many of our others), we have picked different labs and have used a few different Think Sheets. But perhaps the most noticeable difference is the collection of problems chosen for the CalcPad problem sets. You may get some push-back from students on these because many of the problems are very difficult. But it should serve as a reminder to them of the course they have enrolled in - HONORS Physics.
Simple Harmonic Motion
Springs, Hooke's Law, vibrating masses on springs, etc. is not included in this unit. Because many teachers may wish to include it, we would like to identify the following resources.
An entire unit or several days of coverage could be created from the above resources.
Labs
Proposing a collection of labs for teachers without knowing what equipment they have access to is quite difficult. We have proposed five labs that range from no-tech to high tech. One lab uses a stopwatch and a staircase, one lab uses a meter stick and a force scale, one lab uses a motion detector, and two labs use photogates. The Lab Test uses a stack of Dominos, a ruler, a marble, and a meter stick. You will find more labs with a range of equipment requirements in the Laboratory section of our website. The Teacher's Guide listing can be found
here.
NGSS and the Science Reasoning Center
Energy is a big part of the Next Generation Science Standards. For those of us who teach Physics, it is both a Disciplinary Core Idea and a Crosscutting Concept. Our Science Reasoning Center is packed with interactive activities that emphasize science reasoning skills in the context of content. Put another way, you will find numerous activities that lie at the intersection of a disciplinary core idea, a science and engineering practice, and a crosscutting concept. The
Energy section of our Science Reasoning Center includes numerous activities that would be of interest to those using an NGSS curriculum as well as those using any Physics curriculum. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Push the Plow
This five-part activity addresses student's ability to understand the design of an experiment, to identify evidence-based claims, to use proportional reasoning skills to determine relationships between variables, and to predict the result of additional trials.
- Energy on an Inclined Plane
This five-part NGSS activity targets a student's ability to make decisions regarding the design of an investigation, perform energy calculations from collected data, use an energy model to interpret the findings and to describe and explain the energy changes that are occurring, and evaluate a collection of claims regarding energy associated with the phenomenon.
- Modeling Roller Coasters
This NGSS-inspired activity challenges students to develop and use energy models to explain how energy is transformed between kinetic and potential energy. Exercises within the task include three Matching Pair exercises, three Paragraph Completion exercises, a Ranking Task exercise, a Table Completion exercise, and a Law Breaker exercise.
- Hot Wheels Stopping Distance
This NGSS-inspired activity challenges students to plan an investigation, to identify the effect (both qualitatively and quantitatively) of one variable upon another variable, to use the pattern in the data to make predictions by interpolation and extrapolation, to apply the speed-stopping distance relationship, and to use an energy model to explain the experimental results.
Other Resources
There are a few resources that we did not list in our
Lesson Plans and
Learning Outcomes and Activities that you may find to be very helpful. These include:
- Concept Builder: LOL Charts
Students use an energy bar chart to describe how energy is stored, transferred, and/or conserved for a variety of physical situations.
- Physics Interactives: Kinetic Energy
This simulation provides students a rich, interactive environment for investigating relationships between the force exerted on an object, the distance over which the force acts, and the speed and kinetic energy that the object acquires.
- The Calculator Pad: Work and Energy
There are 20 problem sets in our Calculator Pad section with 150 problems. From these we created seven custom CalcPad problem sets. But there's problems if you need them. And with a Task Tracker subscription and our directions or video walk through, you can create your own problem sets.
- Minds On Physics: Mission WE8 on Energy Analysis
Students conduct an energy analysis to determine the KE, PE, h, and v at a variety of locations. There is no work done by non-conservative forces.
- Minds On Physics: Mission WE10 on Work-Energy Analysis
Students conduct an energy analysis to determine the KE, PE, h, and v at a variety of locations. There is work done by non-conservative forces.
Teacher Presentation Pack
Our
Teacher Presentation Pack is loaded with a collection of Slide Decks and animations for use in your classroom. Once downloaded, they are fully modifiable and customizable. They would allow you to quickly pull up a Slide for discussion in class or to show a quick animation. It may be a worthwhile investment, particularly if you are an early-career or cross-over Physics teacher.
Also Available ...
Physics teachers may find the following
for-sale tools to be useful supplements to our Lesson Plan and Pacing Guide section:
- Task Tracker Subscription (annual purchase)
A subscription allows teachers to set up classes, add students, customize online assignments, view student progress/scores, and export student scores. Task Tracker accounts allow your students to begin assignments in class or at school and to finish them at home. View our Seat and Cost Calculator for pricing details.
- The Solutions Guide
We publish a free curriculum with >200 ready-to-use Think Sheets for developing physics concepts. The Solutions Guide is a download containing the source documents, PDFs of source documents, and answers/solutions in MS Word and PDF format. An expanded license agreement is included with the purchase. (Cost: $25 download)
- Teacher Presentation Pack
This is a large collection of downloadable content packed with nearly 190 Microsoft PowerPoint slide decks, the corresponding Lesson Notes (as PDF and fully-modifiable MS Word format), about 170 animations (in .gif, .png, and .mp4 file formats), a countless number of ready-to-use images (including the original source documents that would allow for easy modification of those images), and a license that allows teachers to modify and use all the content with their classes on password-protected sites (such as course management systems). (Cost: $40 download)
- Question Bank
We distribute a Question Bank that includes more than 9300 questions neatly organized according to topic. The Question Bank is the perfect tool for busy teachers or new teachers. Even if you don't use the website with your classes, the Question Bank will assist you in quickly putting together quizzes, tests and other documents with high-quality questions that target student's conceptions of physics principles. And if you do use The Physics Classroom website, the Question Bank is the perfect complement to the materials found at the website. (Cost: $25 download)