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Middle School

Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions

 

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations
 

 

Ask questions about data to determine the factors that affect the strength of electric and magnetic forces. MS-PS2-3

Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

Clarification Statement: Examples of devices that use electric and magnetic forces could include electromagnets, electric motors, or generators. Examples of data could include the effect of the number of turns of wire on the strength of an electromagnet, or the effect of increasing the number or strength of magnets on the speed of an electric motor.

Assessment Boundary: Assessment about questions that require quantitative answers is limited to proportional reasoning and algebraic thinking.

Science and Engineering Practices

Asking Questions and Defining Problems

Asking questions and defining problems in grades 6–8 builds from grades K–5 experiences and progresses to specifying relationships between variables and clarifying arguments and models.

Ask questions that can be investigated within the scope of the classroom, outdoor environment, and museums and other public facilities with available resources and, when appropriate, frame a hypothesis based on observations and scientific principles. (MS-PS2-3)

Disciplinary Core Ideas

PS2.B:  Types of Interactions

Electric and magnetic (electromagnetic) forces can be attractive or repulsive, and their sizes depend on the magnitudes of the charges, currents, or magnetic strengths involved and on the distances between the interacting objects. (MS-PS2-3)

Crosscutting Concepts

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect relationships may be used to predict phenomena in natural or designed systems. (MS-PS2-3)

Common Core State Standards Connections

ELA/Literacy
  • RST.6-8.1 - Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts. (MS-PS2-3)
Mathematics
  • MP.2 - Reason abstractly and quantitatively. (MS-PS2-3)