STCMS™, STC³ Edition: Energy, Forces, and Motion 5-Class Unit Kit

Grades 6–8. Unit Highlight—Students design, refine, and redesign a roller coaster for optimal performance. As part of the unit assessment, students are challenged to apply their content knowledge and science and engineering practice skills to design a solution for safely transporting fruit in a dynamics car.

Daily life provides students with many experiences—for example, riding in cars, participating in sports activities, visiting amusement parks—through which they can see evidence of forces and energy changes and observe how objects move. During the Energy, Forces, and Motion unit, students investigate different forces, how those forces change the motion of objects and energy, and the different forms energy can take.

From the new STC³ Edition, Energy, Forces, and Motion addresses the performance expectations, and attendant science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts, deemed appropriate for grades 6 through 8 by the Next Generation Science Standards® (NGSS). It allows students to develop conceptual understanding of Newton's 3 laws using equipment that is both familiar and developmentally appropriate. By completing this unit, students and teachers alike will develop a better understanding of objects that roll, fall, and collide.

Each lesson in this unit builds on the skills and concepts presented in previous lessons. As students progress through the unit, they take increasing responsibility for their own learning. Eventually, students plan and conduct their own procedures, and they analyze the results obtained. Therefore, the unit should be taught in its entirety; it should not be used as a sourcebook of occasional experiments.

To structure and scaffold the development of students' knowledge, skills, and cognitive reasoning, this unit includes 3 primary lesson types: pre-assessment, skills and knowledge building, and assessment. The pre-assessment lesson allows educators to access students' preconceptions, misconceptions, and skills. The skills and knowledge-building lessons provide multiple opportunities for students to grow and learn through formative assessment. The assessment lesson includes both performance and written assessment activities that function together as a summative assessment of student learning.

This 5-Class Unit Kit comes with a Teacher's Edition, teacher access to Carolinascienceonline.com, 16 reusable hardbound Student Guides, student eBook access, and the materials needed for a teacher to teach up to 5 classes of 32 students per day.

Next Generation Science Standards®
Performance Expectations

• MS-PS2-1. Apply Newton's Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of 2 colliding objects.
• MS-PS2-2. 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.
• MS-PS2-3. Ask questions about data to determine the factors that affect the strength of electric and magnetic forces.
• MS-PS2-5. Conduct an investigation and evaluate the experimental design to provide evidence that fields exist between objects exerting forces on each other even though the objects are not in contact.
• MS-PS3-1. Construct and interpret graphical displays of data to describe the relationships of kinetic energy to the mass of an object and to the speed of an object.
• MS-PS3-2. Develop a model to describe that when the arrangement of objects interacting at a distance changes, different amounts of potential energy are stored in the system.
• MS-PS3-5. Construct, use, and present arguments to support the claim that when the kinetic energy of an object changes, energy is transferred to or from the object.
• MS-ETS1-1. Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
• MS-ETS1-2. Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
• MS-ETS1-3. Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
• MS-ETS1-4. Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• PS2.A: Forces and motion
• PS2.B: Types of interactions
• PS3.A: Definitions of energy
• PS3.B: Conservation of energy and energy transfer
• PS3.C: Relationship between energy and forces
• ETS1.A: Defining and delimiting engineering problems
• ETS1.B: Developing possible solutions
• ETS1.C: Optimizing the design solution

 Science and Engineering Practices

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Developing and using models
• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Analyzing and interpreting data
• Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Constructing explanations and designing solutions
• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Crosscutting Concepts

• Patterns
• Cause and effect
• Scale, proportion, and quantity
• Systems and system models
• Energy and matter
• Structure and function
• Stability and change
• Connections to engineering, technology, and applications of science; influence of science, engineering, and technology on society and the natural world

Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: Pre-Assessment: Let's Get Moving
Students perform short, simple investigations that evaluate their existing knowledge of one or more concepts related to energy, forces, and motion. Students observe collisions, construct and analyze graphs, predict changes in motion, and model energy changes. Students also plan and carry out their own procedures and use engineering design skills to construct a balloon rocket.
Lesson 2: Force, Velocity, and Acceleration
Students observe the motion of a rolling ball and investigate how mass and different surfaces affect its speed. Students consider how forces are involved in the ball's motion and predict how rolling a ball up or down an inclined plane will affect its speed. Students also investigate how mass relates to weight and prepare a graph showing the relationship.
Lesson 3: Magnetic Forces
Students organize prior knowledge about magnets and magnetism and then distinguish between magnetic and nonmagnetic materials. Students plan and conduct investigations to determine how the force of a magnetic field is affected by magnet strength and distance from the magnet.
Lesson 4: Newton's First and Second Laws
Students are introduced to Newton's first and second laws, and apply their understanding to the motion of a dynamics car. Students plan investigations, predict the motion of a car, and construct explanations using evidence gathered during their investigations.
Lesson 5: Kinetic and Gravitational Potential Energy
Students are introduced to gravitational potential energy and use a ball falling into sand to investigate how the mass or height of an object relates to its potential and kinetic energy. Students develop a model to describe the energy of a system and use experimental evidence to support the claim that an energy transfer is responsible for changes in kinetic energy.
Lesson 6: Newton's Third Law
Students are introduced to Newton's third law and use a battery powered fan to determine the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of a (dynamics) car. Students draw diagrams showing action-reaction force pairs and then apply Newton's third law to move a tennis ball in an engineering design challenge.
Lesson 7: Collisions
Students predict the motion of a dynamics car following a collision with a car of the same mass and a car of a different mass. Students apply the law of conservation of energy to explain energy transfer during a collision, develop a model to describe the total energy of the system, and apply Newton's 3 laws to explain the outcome of a collision.
Lesson 8: Transforming Energy
Students use foam pipe insulation to build a basic roller coaster that transforms gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy and can be used to test roller coaster design elements. Next, students construct a roller coaster that accomplishes a design challenge by defining criteria and constraints, evaluating competing design solutions, and testing and refining designs to optimize roller coaster performance.
Lesson 9: Performance Assessment
The unit concludes with a 2-part assessment. The first part is a performance assessment, in which students demonstrate their content knowledge and science and engineering skills to design a solution for transporting plastic fruit in a dynamics car without it falling off of the vehicle. In the second part, students complete a written assessment covering the performance expectations, disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices covered in this unit.