PHYSICS OF FLIGHT

Students experiment to develop understanding of Newton's Laws and how they apply to space travel in this ten day instructional activity sequence.

Newton's Laws get the rocket to work, but do they serve any other functions? A six-page resource classifies rockets by the type of propellant they use. It then describes applications of Newton's Laws of Motion, both in the ability to...

If you want to have your space science superstars build and test rockets, NASA has crafted a comprehensive guide for you! In collaborative groups, high schoolers construct soda bottle rockets and apply Newton's laws of motion. Everything...

High school physicists demonstrate Bernoulli's Principle by blowing on different items and finding that they do not move in the expected direction! They apply Bernoulli's equation to the flight of an airplane. This well-organized lesson...

While science is looking for correct explanations, pseudoscience often fills in the blanks. Pupils explore the relationship between light distance and intensity and graph their data. Then they compare their data to Newton's Law of...

Pupils work together to investigate the cooling of NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Using data collected as the pool cooled, groups determine the values needed in Newton's Law of Cooling equation to model the situation. They...

It's the law—every action requires a reaction, no matter how small. Pupils experience two demonstrations of Newton's third law of motion as it relates to thrust in the 10th segment of a 22-part unit on flight. Using their mathematical...

A football tackle is just a transfer of momentum, Learners discover the principles of Newton's Third Law by analyzing football tackling. The third lesson in a series of 10 videos shows how the mass and velocity of a defensive player lead...

High schoolers are introduced to Newton's Laws. They are shown excerpts from Road Runner, and students are asked to write new laws of their own, and then constrast them to the behavior of real world objects in motion, and to Newton's...

Young scientists investigate the scientific concepts and principles that help make common toys such as hula hoops, yo-yos, slinkies, and silly putty work. As a class, they read "Backyard Rocket Science, Served Wet" to get a look behind...