Dropping Stuff
Third grade Physics lesson
Liaison:
Date:
Group Members: Eva Holtz and Kevin Gold
School: Tobin
Teacher: Mary hill
Materials:
Lots of stuff, possibly including but not limited to:
Pennies
Apples
Balls
Paper
Utensils
Books
etc.
Procedure:
Students will be prepped a bit on the problem of whether heavy objects fall faster or not.
To test their hypotheses, students will break up into groups of two and drop stuff.
One person keeps dropping stuff, the other tallies which stuff hit the ground first.
If being the person to drop stuff seems like an enviable position to be in, the partners
will take turns doing this.
After a few minutes, groups will trade stuff and repeat. Problematic stuff will be
removed, new stuff will be introduced.
At the end we will tally the results for each pairing, and see whether weight or air
resistance is a better predictor of which hit the ground first.
Do final demo with 9 pennies vs. 1, asking for hypotheses, then do demo comparing paper
(crumpled vs. uncrumpled) with one of the objects that has a moderate amount of air
resistance.
Evaluation:
Students will receive a handout on which they can record their hypotheses and observations
Comments:
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