Science: Kinetic and Potential Energy

It's my favorite time of year again! Why? No, not Halloween. Although, trick or treating from my students is wonderfully convenient. No, not Thanksgiving. Although it is my favorite holiday, just good food, good friends, and family; no need to buy presents. First snow? Nope. Winter break?

So what is it?

Energy unit time! Oh, what fun we have studying various types of energy and how it's transferred.

Kinetic and Potential Energy

Rubberbands and Watermelons

Beginning with kinetic and potential energy, we had a little fun with a bag of rubberbands and a watermelon. Students felt the difference in the amount of energy needed to stretch 1 rubberband  as opposed to 2 or 3. As the band is stretched, the students' kinetic energy from pulling is transferred into the stretched rubberband. When placed around the watermelon, the energy is prevented from transferring back to kinetic. Do this 150-200 times and all that energy accumulates until eventually... well, see for yourself!

Energy Transfers and Rube Goldberg Machines

Gravity wants to return everything to the ground. If we don't want something on the ground, we  use energy to lift it up. Balance a marker over the edge of the table and eventually the energy we used to place it there will be returned to kinetic energy as the marker falls. Of course, there are much cooler examples of this in the following Rube Goldberg machines. We'll be returning to them throughout this unit to discuss the different ways energy is transferred throughout the systems.

I'll admit, it's best to watch them in awe a few times before attempting to analyze how the energy is transferred. But, keep your students coming back to observe how energy is transferred throughout these systems.

Newton's Laws

We keep this as more of an introduction because it's hard to talk about kinetic energy without referencing Newton's Laws of Motion. Below is a video showing some cool pendulum science and a second that explains the forces in action.

Additional Resources

For some great energy games, head over to the Lewis5.org energy page which can be accessed through the link below, or any other time under Resource-->Science-->Energy. On the page you'll also find the relevant information from the textbook in PDF form. Images of the text were taken with my camera phone so they're not perfect but, they are pretty good considering.