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Friction 5E Lesson

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Angela Hoang Angela Hoang 665 Points

Hi everyone!

I am writing a 5E friction lesson where the students are guided through creating their own investigation about friction. For the explore section, I was thinking of having the students use different materials to test out friction with a toy car and ramp. What other hands-on activities could I conduct that is an extension of the explore section? 
Pamela Dupre Pamela Dupre 92369 Points

Hi Angela,

Great question! Have you used the tab ~Explore All Resources? That's one of the main places I look. I use it to help build my content knowledge and to see how other teachers have tackled the same concept. I searched Friction 5E for you and found https://common.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/sc10_047_07_19

You can also search teacher resources at [email protected]

You can also have students write down what they are still curious about after doing the experiment. Those things they wonder can help them to evaluate their learning and extend the lesson based on what variables they would want to change if they had the chance to try it again. In doing so, they get to explore their own ideas!
Ruth Hutson Ruth Hutson 64325 Points

Hi Angela, 

I've attached a collection of resources whose theme is friction.  It might give you some additional ideas of possibilities for your lesson. 

Another idea would be to have students construct a friction board apparatus which is a board that is covered with several different surfaces like sandpaper, corkboard, plastic, and felt.  They could use this to test their car. 

I've also have students test the friction of the bottom of their shoes. Students remove one of their shoes and using a spring scale they drag it along the surfaces on the friction board.  They can then compare the friction between the bottom of their shoes by reading the spring scale.

This could also be done with their car, if you wanted to test a toy car moving on a ramp. You would just have them place both rough and smooth surface on the ramp and then pull the car over them.  Depending on the age of your students, they could then graph their results and compare.  Ask them which surface provided the most friction and which surface provided the least friction.  

It also might be a good idea to have students consider when friction would be important and when one would want to decrease friction.  

 


Friction in the Elementary School Classroom Collection (10 items)
- Journal Article
Sean Richardson Sean Richardson 760 Points

Consider something like a block of wood and ramp, the similar blocks of wood are available in many elementary classrooms. Ramp can be clip boards.

The block of wood will not slide as easily as the car. But by adding other material to the ramp, different grit of sand paper can cause a different level of ramp angle which causes the block of wood to move.
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