Roll Drop Bounce Curriculum
Discover the “phun” side of physics! Explore Newton’s Laws of Motion, kinetic and potential energy
and other physics phenomena with this engaging, hands-on exhibit. In this active learning laboratory
you can design and build a mini-car, race balls down our racing ramps, shoot the loop-the-loop,
launch a catapult and much more! Concepts: Newton’s Laws of Motion, physics, potential and kinetic
energy, critical and logical thinking.
T.R.E.E. House Challenge
Try one or more of the following activities during your visit to the Roll, Drop, Bounce exhibit. This exhibit has many activities that will work for a variety of ages and grade levels. Enjoy!
Grades PreK – 2
Explore the Newton’s Cradle with your students. What happens when you pull one ball back and allow it to strike the remaining balls? What happens when you try two? Three? Compare the billiard
ball activity to the tennis ball activity at this exhibit. Which is noisier? Which packs more of a “punch”
when the balls collide? Ask students why the tennis balls don’t get as much of a reaction as the billiard balls. Explore the Bounce exhibit with your students. Have students compare the bouncing
height of a few of the selected balls in the bin. Older students may be capable of reporting actual
measurements, but for younger students, you can have them use their hands to show the height to
which the balls bounce. Which balls are good bouncers? Which don’t go as high? Why might this be?
This has to do with a variety of factors including internal friction, size, weight, etc. Without getting
too complicated, students will be able to observe many of these differences just by using their powers of observation. Check out the tubes and chutes exhibit in the back of the gallery. Allow students
to explore building and constructing series of ramps and chutes to see if they can get a ball to roll all
the way to the bottom. What worked best? What didn’t work? If something doesn’t work at first,
how can you change it to make it work? Why do you think the ball always rolls downward? This exhibit is a fun place to introduce the concept of “gravity” and there are plenty of other exhibits to experiment with using gravity.
Grades 3 – 5
Ask students to experiment with the Ball Drop at the far left of the gallery. What happens when you
drop just the top ball from a particular height? Two? All three? This is a great place to discuss the transfer of energy that happens from one ball to the other when the balls fall and strike the base of the exhibit. Students can also compare the “bouncy” quality of these balls with the other balls they find in the
Bounce exhibit. Explore the Newton’s Cradle exhibit with your students. Compare the transfer of energy
that happens between the balls with that of the balls dropped in the Ball Drop exhibit. How are the two
exhibits alike? How are they different? What other experiments can students think of to further explore
transfer of energy? Explore the Ramps exhibit with students. Which cars work best on which tracks?
Why? Does a car that performs poorly on one track perform better on another? Why do you think the
angle of the track matters? Check out our explanation of Newton’s Laws of Motion beside this exhibit to
see if it might aid in the discussion.
Classroom Challenge
Grades PreK – 2
Car racing! Who doesn’t love the excitement of a car race? Have a class race using toy cars, but change
things up a bit. You can create a ramp that the cars can roll down using books or scrap pieces of wood.
Have students roll the cars on similar surfaces, at similar angles first and compare results. Cars of similar
weight should finish close together in a race. Now, play with variables – change the incline of the ramps,
making one steeper than the other. How does this affect the race? Change the surfaces of the ramps. If
one ramp is smooth and the other is very rough, which car will finish first? Why? You can demonstrate
Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion very simply with a balloon. Fill the balloon with air and then let it go. It’s
that simple! As the air blows out the back of the balloon, it propels the balloon forward. For one action
there is an equal and opposite reaction. Try filling balloons up to different amounts – some half full,
some completely full – and see how they react differently as they shoot into the air. Why do some travel
farther than others?
Grades 3 – 5
Ask students to bring in a plastic top from home – or bring in a few of your own – tops can be found on
the cheap at a local toy store or the toy department of your nearest department store. Try to have as
much variety as possible in top design, shape, etc. Have students experiment with the tops, recording
observations of which tops spin the longest, fastest, hardest to spin, easiest to spin and other things
they notice about the tops. At the conclusion of the activity, have students share their results. Discuss
how a top’s shape can affect the spin. What other variables (person spinning, spinning surface, etc.) can
affect a top’s spin? Explore Newton’s law of inertia. Take a raw egg (don’t panic!) and have a student
gently spin the egg on a flat surface. As the egg is spinning, have the student – or model this yourself! –
gently touch the egg with your finger in an attempt to stop the spin, but remove your finger quickly.
What happens? The egg pauses, but continues to spin. Ask student why this might happen. This “ghost
spin” of the raw egg is due to the fluid insides of the egg. You are stopping the shell, but the yolk and
white inside the egg are continuing to move in that same direction and cause the egg to keep spinning.
To go a little further, compare a raw egg spin to a hardboiled egg spin. Touch each as they spin to try to
stop them. Students will notice that the raw egg keeps spinning while the solid, hardboiled egg stops.
Resources
Grades K – 2
http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/louviere/Newton/
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/motion_laws.html
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/motion_force.html
http://science.k12flash.com/newton3lawsmotion.html
Grades 3 – 5
http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/661.html
http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/louviere/Newton/
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/newton.html
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/motion_force.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH48Lc7wq0U
http://www.racemath.info/
This Exhibit is brought to our community by:
Organized by NRG! Exhibits