Activity
PBS

Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Paddle Power [Pdf]

For Students 3rd - 8th
Hands-on challenge to design and build a paddle boat that moves across water using a rubber band as its power source. Provides full list of materials with ideas on how to design, build, test, and redesign it if necessary. Activity...
Unit Plan
OpenStax

Open Stax: Chemical Reactions

For Students 9th - 10th
This site provides an overview of the role of energy in chemical reactions.
Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Ready for an Energy Makeover?

For Students 9th - 10th
Sometimes these are changes that happen routinely in the natural world, and sometimes these are "makeovers" where human creations transform energy into a specific form that serves a specific need. Either way, we call these changes energy...
Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Kinetic and Potential Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
Given diagrams, illustrations or relevant data, students will identify examples of kinetic and potential energy and their transformations.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Runaway Train: Investigating Speed With Photo Gates

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Students conduct an experiment to determine the relationship between the speed of a wooden toy car at the bottom of an incline and the height at which it is released. They observe how the photogate-based speedometer instrument "clocks"...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Power Your House With Wind

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students learn how engineers harness the energy of the wind to produce power by following the engineering design process as they prototype two types of wind turbines and test to see which works best. Students also learn how engineers...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Energy of Motion

For Teachers 6th - 8th
By taking a look at the energy of motion all around us, students learn about the types of energy and their characteristics. They first learn about the two simplest forms of mechanical energy: kinetic and potential energy, as illustrated...
Interactive
Concord Consortium

Concord Consortium: Stem Resources: Atoms and Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
Online activity walks learner through exploration of kinetic and potential energy using animations. Through graphs, a quantitative connection is made between the movement and the energy involved. This information is then related to the...
Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Ap Physics: Conservative Forces and Potential Energy

For Students 11th - 12th
By the end of this section, you will be able to define conservative force, potential energy, and mechanical energy; explain the potential energy of a spring in terms of its compression when Hooke's law applies; and use the work-energy...
Unit Plan
CK-12 Foundation

Ck 12: Potential Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] Students explore the differences between kinetic and potential energy, and understand how they are dependent on each other.
Lesson Plan
Better Lesson

Better Lesson: Skate Park Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
Using computer simulation, students will explore the concept of conservation of energy at a skate park. After the completion of that exercise, students will move to a worksheet about the concepts with a roller coaster. Site includes...
Unit Plan
CK-12 Foundation

Ck 12: Heat

For Students 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] In this online lesson students will describe how the macroscopic properties of a thermodynamic system such as temperature, specific heat, and pressure are related to...
Unit Plan
CK-12 Foundation

Ck 12: Potential Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] In this online tutorial, students are invited to investigate examples of potential energy and their transformations.
Unit Plan
CK-12 Foundation

Ck 12: Forms of Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] In this online lesson students will investigate examples of kinetic and potential energy and their transformations.
Activity
Science Buddies

Science Buddies: How Long Will My Sleepy Yo Yo Sleep?

For Students 9th - 10th
Yo-yo's are 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...
Lesson Plan
The Tech Interactive

The Tech Museum of Innovation: Save the Hiker [Pdf]

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Can you build a device that will deliver life-saving treatment to someone in a hazardous situation? During this lesson, students will learn how energy is converted and transferred between objects. Working in groups and through the...
Lesson Plan
Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Balloon Car

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students will design, build, and race balloon-powered cars in this fun lesson that teaches about engineering design and kinetic and potential energy.
Lesson Plan
Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Paper Roller Coasters: Kinetic and Potential Energy

For Teachers 6th - 8th
In this lesson, your students will learn about kinetic and potential energy as they build their own roller coasters from simple classroom materials.
Lesson Plan
Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Teaching Engineering Design With an Egg Drop

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students build a device to protect an egg and prevent it from breaking when dropped.
Unit Plan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mit: Open Course Ware: Force and Potential Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
The activity investigates conservation of energy. Some topics explored are friction, kinetic energy, conservation of energy, and potential energy. The resource consists of video clips, lecture notes, practice problems, and exam...
Graphic
Georgia State University

Georgia State University: Hyper Physics: Conservation of Energy

For Students 9th - 10th
This site is from the Physics Department at Georgia State University. The conservation of energy as a fundamental conservation law is presented and compared to other conservation laws (momentum and angular momentum). Links to further...
Handout
City University of New York

Energy: Characteristics of Life

For Students 9th - 10th
An explanation of types of energy, how living things use energy and how they can convert energy forms. This is a good, basic, start to studying this characteristic of life.
Handout
Energy for Sustainable Development

Esd Bulgaria: Kids & Energy: Seven Energy Principles

For Students 3rd - 5th
Outlines the seven main principles of energy.
Handout
Wolfram Research

Wolfram Science World: Capacitor

For Students 9th - 10th
A rather mathematical explanation of a capacitor. Gives all the appropriate formulae, with many hotwords for further info.