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Grade 4. During the module's 15 lessons, students investigate the transfer of energy through contact forces in collisions. This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Grade 4. Module Highlights: During the module's 15 lessons, students investigate the transfer of energy through contact forces in collisions. This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Student Readers Available HERE

Alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards*
Performance Expectations

• 4-PS3-1: Use evidence to construct an explanation relating the speed of an object to the energy of that object.
• 4-PS3-2: Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.
• 4-PS3-3: Ask questions and predict outcomes about the changes in energy that occur when objects collide.
• 4-LS1-1: Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
• 3-5-ETS1-1: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or want that includes specific criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

• The faster a given object is moving, the more energy it possesses.
• Energy can be moved from place to place by moving objects or through sound, light, or electric currents.

• Energy is present whenever there are moving objects, sound, light, or heat. When objects collide, energy can be transferred from one object to another, thereby changing their motion. In such collisions, some energy is typically also transferred to the surrounding air; as a result, the air gets heated, and sound is produced.

• When objects collide, the contact forces transfer energy so as to change the objects' motions.

• Plants and animals have both internal and external structures that serve various functions in growth, survival, behavior, and reproduction.

• Possible solutions to a problem are limited by available materials and resources (constraints). The success of a designed solution is determined by considering the desired features of a solution (criteria). Different proposals for solutions can be compared on the basis of how well each one meets the specified criteria for success or how well each takes the constraints into account.

Focal Science and Engineering Practices

• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Developing and using models

Focal Crosscutting Concepts

• Energy and matter

Phenomena and Problems Storyline
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: An Energetic Enigma
Students are introduced to the phenomenon through a video. They develop an initial explanation through models and are introduced to the concept of energy. Students brainstorm indicators of energy based on prior knowledge.
Lesson 2: Give Me Some Energy
Students perform a series of mini-investigations to illustrate the indicators of energy and use this information to build on their prior knowledge. They record observations as data and use it to update their list of indicators of energy.
Lesson 3: A Super Model
Students use the data they recorded in Lesson 2 to complete a model of the transfer of energy that took place in each mini-investigation. Their list of indicators of energy is updated to reflect new knowledge gathered through their data, analysis, and modeling.
Lesson 4: Faster, Faster, Faster
The class returns to the video of colliding cars from Lesson 1. They use their new knowledge about indicators of energy to gather new data based on observations from the video. Based on their new observations, students begin planning an investigation to figure out if they can control the speed of a car using a ramp to model their idea that the moving car in the second video is going faster than the one in the first.
Lesson 5: A Sound Investigation
Students plan and carry out a fair-test investigation to determine if there is a relationship between the speed of the car and the amount of energy it possesses. They use sound as a measurable indicator of energy. Students use data from their investigation as evidence to construct and support a claim that explains the relationship between the speed of an object and the amount of energy it possesses.
Lesson 6: Investigating Collisions
The class reviews what they have figured out so far: (1) the faster the car moves, the more energy it possesses; (2) they can increase the speed of the car by raising the ramp. Students collaboratively plan an investigation that models the two collisions in the video. They use data collected from the investigation to develop a revised final explanation that is supported by a model illustrating the transfer of energy during both collisions in the video.
Lesson 7: A Long Way Down
Students are introduced to the phenomenon through a video of the Space Shuttle Discovery orbiter landing at the Kennedy Space Center. They are told that it reenters the atmosphere at 17,000 miles per hour and lands at just over 200 miles per hour, but it has no brakes and doesn't use an engine or thrusters while it glides back to Earth. Students share initial ideas about what happened to the energy the orbiter Discovery had when it entered the atmosphere. The class uses images, a 3-D model, and the video to record evidence of indicators of energy that could help them figure out where the craft's energy went.
Lesson 8: A Hot Flight
Students read a text to gather information about how objects can cause the air they move through to become heated. They combine the new information from the text with the indicators of energy identified in Lesson 7 to develop a claim supported by evidence that the Space Shuttle Discovery orbiter's energy was transferred to the air it moved through, causing it to heat up and slow down.
Lesson 9: It’s in the Air
Students use a physical model to test out ideas about how the Space Shuttle Discovery interacts with the air. Students then use their data to evaluate the quality of an explanation about what happened to the craft's energy during its descent.
Lesson 10: Safe Landing
Students use a digital simulation to investigate the movement of the Space Shuttle Discovery orbiter as it collides with the air in Earth's atmosphere. They combine evidence from across all four lessons to develop a revised model that illustrates what happened to the craft's energy to slow it down and land.
Lesson 11: Dropped from Space
Students are introduced to a common engineering problem facing space programs: safely returning astronauts to Earth. The class develops a set of criteria and constraints that are necessary to the design of a space capsule. Students use digital media to take note of how space capsules throughout history meet the criteria they came up with.
Lesson 12: This Design Is Nuts
Students read about the internal and external parts of the black walnut and how they protect the seed from damage from animals and the impact with the ground. Students use the information to support their development of a plan for the design of a space capsule that can protect an astronaut by reducing the impact of its collision with Earth.
Lesson 13: Engineering a Space Capsule
Students create proposed design solutions and share them among their group. Groups agree on a single design and explain how it meets the criteria and constraints. They test models of their proposed solutions and evaluate how well they do or do not meet the criteria and constraints. Students test their models using a hard-boiled egg to model the astronaut.
Science Challenge
Lesson 14: A Knockout, Part 1
Students are introduced to the croquet strike through a video. They record observations of the indicators of energy and use them to construct a claim supported by evidence and a model.
Lesson 15: A Knockout, Part 2
Students test their claims using a physical model. They record their findings and identify patterns in the data. They compare their results to predictions they wrote as claims during the previous lesson. They collaborate to model the transfer of energy when the first ball is hit slowly and when it is hit fast. Students develop a revised argument that is supported by their data and models.

*Next Generation Science Standards® is a registered trademark of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards were involved in the production of this product, and do not endorse it.