Physics Projects, Lessons, Activities (Page 16)

Electric Play Dough

Lesson Plan Grade: 4th

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If you love doing arts and crafts with your students, this lesson plan is for you! Teach them about energy, electricity, and circuits as they build light-up sculptures, using something they are all familiar with—play dough! Clear step-by-step instructions are provided and no previous experience with circuits is required. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

4-PS3-2. Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.

Evaporative Cooling with Liquids

STEM Activity

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Have you ever wondered why we sweat when our environment is getting hot or when we exercise? Sweating is a life-saving strategy that cools our body down and maintains our body temperature. Without sweating, our body cannot regulate our temperature, which can lead to overheating or even heatstroke. But why does sweating have a cooling effect? The answer is evaporative cooling. Turning a liquid such as sweat from its liquid state into a gas requires energy. This energy is taken from our body, or… Read more

Explore Shadows with a Shadow Play

Lesson Plan Grade: 3rd

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Everybody and everything that is opaque has a shadow. Shadows are fun to play with because you can change their shape and size or even make them disappear. In this lesson, students will first explore how shadows are made and how their appearance can be changed. Then students will use their gained knowledge to create and perform a shadow play. Remote learning: Part 1 on this lesson plan can be conducted remotely. The Engage section of the lesson can be done over a video call, then students can… Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

1-PS4-3. Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light.

Extreme Sounds: Lessons in a Noisy World

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Can you hear me now . . . ? Just how loud does a sound have to be for us to hear it? And how loud is too loud for our ears? Learn to measure levels of sound in this project, and discover the amazing auditory range your ears can detect in the noisy world around you. If you have a smartphone handy, you can even do this project without purchasing any additional materials, by using your phone's sound sensor and a sensor app. Read more

Forces and Motion

Lesson Plan Grade: 9th-12th

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Students explore how force, mass, and acceleration are related in this hands-on lesson plan. By experimenting with pushing a box across the table while varying force and mass and measuring the box's acceleration with a mobile phone and a sensor app, students discover Newton's second law of motion for themselves. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

HS-PS2-1. Analyze data to support the claim that Newton's second law of motion describes the mathematical relationship among the net force on a macroscopic object, its mass, and its acceleration.

Gelatin Pearls

STEM Activity

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9 reviews

Do you enjoy getting creative in the kitchen? If so, this activity is for you! Molecular cuisine—taking tools, ingredients, and methods typically used in science and using them in cooking—might sound fancy and complicated, but some techniques are easy to replicate! Get your hands wet, fire up your creativity, and see how rewarding it can be! Read more

How Do Arctic Animals Stay Warm?

STEM Activity

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How lovely it is to come home after a chilly winter walk to a cozy house, put on your fluffy slippers, and settle by the fireplace with a warming cup of hot chocolate. Animals like the polar bear, the Arctic wolf, or Antarctic penguins are not so lucky to have such a place. How do they face the extreme winter temperatures? Most take on “winter coats” in the fall. Wondering what these coats look like, and how they help keep animals warm? Do this cool activity and you will feel it… Read more

How Does Your Eardrum Work?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Eardrums are membranes inside your ears that vibrate when sound waves hit them. These vibrations are converted into electrical signals and sent to your brain, which allows you to hear sound. The frequency response of your eardrum, or the range of frequencies that will cause it to vibrate, determines your hearing range. Typical human hearing ranges from about 20 Hz up to 20,000 Hz, although the ability to hear high frequencies typically degrades as you get older. Some other animals can… Read more

How Long Will My Sleepy Yo-yo Sleep?

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Sometimes, simple toys can be quite complicated. Take the yo-yo. It's a fun toy and there is nothing simpler than a string wrapped between two connected disks. But there's a lot of physics that makes a yo-yo work. In this science fair project, learn more about how and why a yo-yo works. You will investigate the effect of string length on the yo-yo's "sleep" trick time. If people ask why you've got a yo-yo with you all the time, tell them that while it looks like you're just having fun, you're… Read more

Hula Hooping with a Rubber Band

STEM Activity

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Are you any good at hula hooping? If not, there is good news: you can do this fun project without any hula hooping experience! You will examine some of the fascinating physics behind hula hooping using just a pencil and a rubber band. Read more

Physics Projects, Lessons, Activities (289 results)

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