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OpenSciEd Physics + Earth & Space Unit 3: Collisions & Momentum Student Edition
Author(s): NATIONAL CENTER FOR
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2024
Pages: 128
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OpenSciEd High School addresses all high school NGSS standards. This comprehensive science curriculum empowers students to question, design, investigate, and solve the world around them.
- Phenomenon Based - Centered around exploring phenomena or solving problems
- Driven by Student Questions - Storyline based on students’ questions and ideas
- Grounded in Evidence - Incremental building and revision of ideas based on evidence
- Collaborative - class and teacher figure out ideas together
- Equitable - Builds a classroom culture that values ideas and learning of all
The OpenSciEd model uses a storyline approach, introducing phenomena that anchors storylines developing disciplinary core ideas, concepts, and science/engineering practices. Students are encouraged to dive deep into key points and solve problems through five activities.
P.3 Collisions & Momentum: What can we do to make driving safer for everyone?
This unit is designed to introduce students to the concept of momentum and Newton’s second law in an intuitive and grounded context. The learning is anchored by a puzzling set of patterns in traffic collision data over time: while overall, vehicle fatalities have been decreasing steadily for decades, the trend appears to have reversed, with both collisions and fatalities increasing. This phenomenon provides the context in which to investigate the physical relationships among mass, velocity, momentum, force, time, and acceleration, basic physical quantities that provide the foundation for the study of mechanics. Students will analyze statistics on vehicle collisions, analyze the motion of vehicles stopping short, and model vehicle collisions as part of an engineering task to reduce the chances of injury in a collision by testing and evaluating solutions that could change force interactions in the system.
Student Procedures
Lesson 1: Why is driving safer today than it was ten years ago, even though the number of vehicle collisions has gone up?
Lesson 2: How does being distracted affect whether you will avoid a collision?
Lesson 3: How does speed affect whether you will avoid a collision?
Lesson 4: What affects the amount of time it takes a vehicle to stop after the driver presses the brakes?
Lesson 5: Can we use mathematical models to explain differences in stopping in wet conditions?
Lesson 6: Do our motion relationships help predict any of the interactions or outcomes in a collision?
Lesson 7: Can our models be used to predict the motion of real-world vehicles in a collision?
Lesson 8: What interactions happen during a vehicle collision, and when do they happen?
Lesson 9: How do safety features affect the forces over time on a person during a collision?
Lesson 10: How are the bodies of cars designed to make collisions safer?
Lesson 11: How do the rigidity and length of the crumple zone influence the safety of the occupants during a collision?
Lesson 12: How can we use our models from across the unit to explain how vehicle systems can be designed to increase safety?
Lesson 13: How can we use our science ideas and societal wants and needs to evaluate arguments around design solutions?
Lesson 14: What can we do to make driving safer for everyone in our community?
Lesson 15: How can we use physics and engineering ideas to make decisions that will make driving safer for everyone?
References
Force Data Protocols
Mass Data Protocols
Speed Data Protocols
Braking Simulation Instructions
Simulation Use Guide
Six Optimization Attempts
Readings
Distracted Driving Research
How Airbags Work
Crash Test Measures
Biases in Modeling People
For Lift Kit
Against Lift Kits
Against Weight Limits
For Weight Limits
For Public Transit
Against Public Transit
NATIONAL CENTER FOR
OpenSciEd® was launched to improve the supply of and address the demand for high-quality, open-source, full course science instructional materials. The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable materials. Though the goal of providing full course materials is still a couple of years away, OpenSciEd is releasing six-week units of instruction as they are completed and externally evaluated as quality by Achieve’s Science Peer Review Panel. OpenSciEd classroom materials are an open education resource and therefore free to download, copy, use, and/or modify. You can download the instructional materials free of charge at Access Materials page on the OpenSciEd website. In an effort to lower barriers for all educators to use OpenSciEd, Kendall Hunt and OpenSciEd have partnered to sell high quality printed books, professional learning and lab kits.