Lessons
Penny for Your Thoughts on Inertia
about 35 minutes
Use pennies and index cards to explore inertia and the well-known magician’s tablecloth trick.
Pain in the Neck
about 50 minutes
Use tennis balls to explore inertia and how to prevent whiplash injuries in rear-end crashes.
Momentum Bashing 1
about 40 minutes
Use inclined ruler ramps to explore how mass affects a marble’s “bashing power.”
Momentum Bashing 2
about 50 minutes
Use ruler ramps to explore how speed affects a marble’s “bashing power.”
Egg Crash! Designing a Collision Safety Device
about 50 minutes
Build a paper landing-pad for a dropped egg to explore how airbags reduce crash forces.
Conservation: It’s the Law!
about 50 minutes
Use marbles and foam pipe insulation “track” to explore where energy “goes” during a collision.
Ball of Energy
about 50 minutes
Throw a tennis ball into the air and collect data to determine impact speed.
Twirling Penny
about 50 minutes
Twirl a penny on a hanger to explore circular motion and how seatbelts and banked roadways protect occupants during turns.
Think Fast, Act Fast
about 40 minutes
Practice catching rulers to calculate reaction time and how far a car travels during a given reaction time.
Distracted Driving Dangers
about 100 minutes
Explore how different distractions affect the time it takes to complete a numbered finger maze.
Stressing Silly Putty
about 100 minutes
Conduct stretch-tests on homemade silly putty to explore how engineers design more realistic crash test dummies.
Stressing Over Pencil Pressure
about 40 minutes
Use pencil push-tests to learn the difference between force and pressure and explore how safety features protect human bodies in a crash.
SONAR Slinky
about 50 minutes
Make longitudinal pulses and waves with a Slinky and learn about sound and ultrasonic sensors.
RADAR Slinky
about 50 minutes
Make transverse pulses and waves with a Slinky and learn about different types of light waves and their use in crash avoidance technologies.
Paper Car Crash!
about 2 weeks
As a culminating activity option, design, build, and crash an egg-carrying paper car to determine the most crashworthy design.
Project Pedestrian
about 150 minutes
As a culminating engineering activity option, design, build, and test pedestrian-safe bumpers for a toy car using wireless sensors.