We recently finished up our science unit on Force and Motion. We started our unit by learning that a force is needed to make an object move, change speed, or change direction. We explored this concept through an obstacle course. The students had to push or pull a bowling ball with a broom through our course and keep it in the boundaries. The students found that the direction they pushed or pulled with the broom was the direction the ball went, and that the amount of force they applied with the broom affected how quickly it changed its speed or direction. There was even one part of the obstacle course where they couldn't touch the ball. They had to apply enough force to keep the ball moving without touching it which allowed us to talk about inertia- an object,s tendency to keep doing what it is already doing.
We also learned how friction can affect the speed and acceleration of an object. We tested 6 different ramps: plain wood, wax paper, tinfoil, paper towel, and 2 different rubbery textures. We predicted which ramp would provide the least amount of friction and which would provide the most. We tested this by putting a toy truck down the ramp and measured how far it traveled. On our first testing day, we found that the plain wood ramp provided the least amount of friction, and the ramp covered in paper towels provided the most. The truck wouldn't even leave the paper towel ramp.
On day 2 how tested how a taller ramp would affect the friction and acceleration. We propped the ramp up on one of our classroom chairs, but we found that the truck traveled the same distance on all of the ramps. We concluded this ramp height was too high, and that gravity had a bigger effect than friction.
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