Unit 6: 8.1 Contact Forces; Collisions

Why do things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other?

1. Students will investigate what is really happening to any object during a collision.
2. Students make their thinking visible with free-body diagrams, mathematical models, and system models to explain the effects of relative forces, mass, speed, and energy in collisions.
3. Students then use what they have learned about collisions to engineer something that will protect a fragile object from damage in a collision. They investigate which materials to use, gather design input from stakeholders to refine the criteria and constraints, develop micro and macro models of how their solution is working, and optimize their solution based on data from investigations.
4. Finally, students apply what they have learned from the investigation and design to a related design problem.

Formative and Summative Assessments