Study Guide for Newton’s Laws of Motion

Essential Question: What forces did Fearless Felix have to overcome?

The Newton Theme you will be studying is another 6-8 week theme. This theme is very time consuming with multiple labs. For the first part of the theme you will be using scientific equipment called Newton Tracks to study and learn how gravity, weight, and friction affect speed.

Below is a picture of the Newton Tracks.

This theme builds off the hypothesis lab you did during the start of the school yaer. You will learn how to look at data from instruments and graphs and infer the results. You will test predictions to confirm your thinking.

The second part of the theme you will take everything you learned from the Newton Tracks to build a car out of KNEX you think will travel the farthest down the hallway based on kinetic energy. Some students will have cars that travel 5 feet, and some cars will go 20 feet. This is where students will then have discussions as to why cars acted the way they did and have a chance to rebuild their cars for the final race and prizes.

The big things you will be learning and understanding while we do various labs is that weight, friction, and gravity work together to slow all objects down. You will learn and see exactly how gravity works when you remove the air. You will understand how cars and trucks are designed to get better gas mileage.

Gravity: To the average person we think that gravity is different for each object. For example: dropping a science book and a piece of paper at the same height. The science book always falls the fastest. This is because in order for any object to move it has to use kinetic energy to move the air out of the way. A law in science says two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time. Since a piece of paper falling doesn’t have a lot of kinetic energy when falling it takes longer for the paper to push air out of the way so it can fall. Newton found out that if you remove all the air from the world and drop things everything would fall at exactly 9.8 meters/second. This means with no air to move out of the way a semi truck, a bowling ball, and a penny would hit the ground at the same time.

When the theme comes to an end you should be able to explain each of Newton’s Laws listed below and explain what each law means based on what you learned from labs. For the test you will be given examples such as which of Newton’s Laws explains how a jet travels though the air. You are encouraged to back up their answers with your thinking.

The short answer question for the test is:

Pretend that you are driving a car full of luggage for a road trip. Your car says that you have one gallon of gas left. The car says that you are getting 15 miles for every gallon of gas. The distance to the nearest gas station is 20 miles. What could you do to get better gas mileage? (Remember that you can't push a 6000 pound car the extra five miles. You also can't walk to get gas. You also don't have a bike to ride to the next town.)

By the end of the theme you should be able to give some real life examples of how to solve the problem.

NEWTON’S LAWS

The 1st law says:

Objects at rest stay at rest, objects in motion stay in motion unless a force acts on them.

This means that an object won’t move unless someone pushes or pulls it. When it’s moving an object will continue moving until a force slows it down. The forces slowing it down are friction and air.

The 2nd law says:

F=MxA Force = Mass X Acceleration

This means that the force you need to use depends on how much mass the objects weighs and how fast you want it to move.

The 3rd law says:

For every action you get an equal but opposite reaction.

This means that when a ball hits a ball it will bounce off.

Remember that friction, how much it weighs, and air slow things down.

Science standards this theme will address:

4-PS3-1 I can use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object.

5-PS2-1 I can support an argument that the gravitational force exerted by Earth on objects is directed down.

3-5-ETS1-3 I can plan and carry out tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered. I can identify areas of a model or prototype that can be improved.

MS-PS2-2 I can plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object.

Here is an example of some of the data you will be collecting and analyzing.