Newton's 1st Law Activities
Newton's first law is called the law of inertia. Basically it states that objects resist changing their state of motion. We did numerous activities in class to demonstrate this law.
Crash Dummies: The students designed a crush dummy made out of clay and put it on top of a toy car. the car was placed on a ramp with a book at the end of the ramp. They let the car go down the ramp (changing the height of the ramp each time) to observe Newton's 1st law in action. Then I had the kids design a seatbelt for their crash dummy and let it go down the ramp. they had to write a statement explaining why they should wear seatbelts using Newton's 1st Law of Motion. Check out what they wrote.
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Table Cloth Trick: The students tried to pull a sheet of paper out from underneath a beaker of water without spilling any water. They also tried different volumes of water and a variety of coins. They were surprised when everyone successfully pulled out the "tablecloth" without spilling a drop!!! Hopefully if they try to show you this at home, they remember that the objects used must have a lot of mass therefore a lot of inertia (resisiting changing their position).
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How Many Pennies Can You Catch?: The students put stacks of pennies on the back of their raise elbow. We tried to find out who could demonstrate Newton's 1st Law the best by catching the most pennies.
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How many different ways can you restate Newton's 1st Law? Click Here