Tools and Machines for Work: Saving your Energy

Planning a unit on simple machines? Save some time and energy with this collection of lessons and activities that explores how these devices are used in the real world to make life a little easier. 

The choice is simple: create a PowerPoint presentation, write a book, or invent a compound machine. Whichever project your young scientists choose, they will be engaged in creatively demonstrating their knowledge of simple...

Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, and he was fascinated by the mechanics of machinery. Using a fun exploration, pupils examine simple machines from the pre-Industrial era. Then, they must identify and build their own using common objects.

What would you be if you were attached to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis? In this fourth presentation that covers work and simple machines, young physicists look at Newtons and Joules as...

Can our eyes detect changes in an object's motion? The video's narrator picks two unsuspecting volunteers to be at the center of an acceleration study. The resource compares the view of a distant landscape with an up-close observation of...

What makes a clock tick or a bulb light up? The concept of work is explained to a backdrop of clever animation. Physics fans learn that the amount of work equals the product of the force and distance, and that the rate equals the amount...

Show your students how to make their work easier. The first lesson in a series of 10 introduces the class to work and the way simple machines can be make work easier. The simple machines scholars can find in everyday items are...

Sometimes simple machines don't seem so...simple. The video lesson explains the principles of simple machines. Viewers also discover the concept of mechanical advantage and how it affects the forces related to simple machines. 

While only briefly mentioned in most Physics books, plane mirrors and their applications offer the basics necessary for future studies. While working through an interactive, pupils demonstrate knowledge of both reflection and its forms....

A Rube Goldberg machine does not really look like it would make work easier. Introduce your class to Rube Goldberg with a resource that shows how his inventions make simple tasks harder to complete.