Interdisciplinary Teaching- This blog was started as a way of using journals and games in physical education class to enhance and connect the learning in math, language arts and science. Now that I am a science teacher I am finding ways to use physical activity to connect the learning in physical science.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Gravity, Potential and Kinetic Energy

We have been talking about gravity for the last couple of weeks. This week we used the standing long jump and the running long jump to demonstrate gravity, momentum, potential and kinetic energy. We started with showing the students how to perform the standing long jump. This is where we introduced potential energy-when the jumper was flexed and ready this is kinetic and when the jumper actually jumps is where the kinetic energy is released. We had a person to act as marker. That person used a baton to mark where the jumper's heel landed. We then asked the question,"How do we know how far the jumper went?" We then introduced the tape measure. We showed the students how to read the tape measure. The first day of measuring we rounded the number to the nearest foot. We then started using inches and then using feet and inches for the upper grades. We repeated this process for the running long jump. The students were able to get a running start of 10 yeards. We asked hot questions such as,"When will we be able to jump further? With standing or running?" This is where we introduced momentum.
The upper grade students had to provide the average of the 3 jumps. The division had to be checked by multiplication.

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