In this activity, students examine how different balls react when colliding with different surfaces. Also, they will have plenty of opportunity to learn how to calculate momentum and understand the principle of conservation of momentum.

Investigate collisions on an air hockey table. Set up your own experiments: vary the number of discs, masses and initial conditions. Is momentum conserved? Is kinetic energy conserved? Vary the elasticity and see what happens.

Conceptual Physics is a year-long course based on CK-12 OER instructional material and supplemented with limited commercially-available materials. The course is project-based, argument-driven inquiry. Each unit begins with presentation of an intriguing phenomenon, followed by an essential question about the phenomenon, and a project centered on answering that essential question. Throughout the unit, students conduct research and investigations to answer portions of the question. Each unit has a student "Task" at the end that serves as an assessment of the unit's concepts. At the end of each unit, students assemble all of the unit tasks and synthesize a personal final project that answers the essential question in a personal context chosen by the student.

Use mathematical representations to support the claim that the total momentum of a system of objects is conserved where there is no net force on the system. The students will be provided with a Lecture, a Discovery Activity, a Technology Laboratory, and a Open or Guided Inquiry Activity. The Lecure, Discovery Activity, and Technology Laboratory are tools that provide the students with the skills to complete the Open or Guided Inquiry Activity. This Activity is a three day long assessment of Baseball and Softball to find out which sport is “harder” based in Physics terms. In the Activity the students will be able to use mathematical representations to explain the momentum of a no net force system.

The Integrated Conceptual Science Program Course 1 Integrated Physics and Chemistry is a three dimensional course based on the Conceptual Progression Model of the Next Generation Science Standards. It is designed to be used as part of a three course program that addresses all high school science performance expectations. Course 1 is designed for ninth grade students.
This resource includes the teacher materials, supporting documents, and short videos to support teachers in using the materials.
The Courses were designed using the Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) framework. It is strongly encouraged that before using these materials that you be familiar with AST. We suggest that you watch the AST Overview short video found here: https://datapuzzles.org/ambitious-science-teaching and explore this Google Slide deck that contains many resources designed to further your understanding of AST: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WOUVmlm636_7i2l0GYa9JkX1TCK3NMdySfpxKN7IM7A/edit?usp=sharing

Use mathematical representations of Newton’s Law of Gravitation and Coulomb’s Law to describe and predict the gravitational and electrostatic forces between an object. The students will learn the material through Lectures, Discovery Activities, Guided Inquiry Activities, Technology Laboratories, and a Laboratory. The importance of being able to predict the forces between objects via Newton’s Law of Gravitation or Coulomb’s Law of Electrostatic Forces will be assessed through primarily technology based activities. This allows the students to explore these forces on the appropriate scales and provides an interactive activity for in the classroom or at home.

Patterns Physics is the initial course in the 3-year high school Patterns Science sequence. Patterns Physics focuses on three-dimensional (3D) learning through culturally responsive, phenomena-based storylines that intertwine the disciplinary core ideas of physics and earth science with the scientific and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts as described in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

The Patterns High School Science Sequence (https://hsscience4all.org/) is a three year course pathway and curriculum aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Each course utilizes:
- Common instructional strategies
- Real world phenomena
- Design challenges to engage students and support their learning.

For more information, contact us at info@pdxstem.org.

The curriculum is a combination of teacher-generated and curated open-content materials. The Teacher-generated materials are shared freely under a Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike Creative Commons License.

Students work within constraints to construct model trusses and then test them to failure as a way to evaluate the relative strength of different truss configurations and construction styles. Each student group uses Popsicle sticks and hot glue to build a different truss configuration from a provided diagram of truss styles. Within each group, each student builds two exact copies of the team's truss configuration using his/her own construction method, one of which is tested under shear conditions and the other tested under compression conditions. Results are compiled and reviewed as a class to analyze the strength of different types of shapes and construction methods under the two types of loads. Students make and review predictions, and normalize strengths. Teams give brief presentations to recap their decisions, results and analysis.