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Physics Day: Coasters, Balloons and a Compass Needle

Grade 8 potential energy practice: use coaster data, charged balloons and a turned compass needle to model how arrangement changes stored energy.

Grade 8ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-PS3-2

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
10 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 8
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use data to model how the distance between a coaster car and Earth changes stored energy.
Students compare attracting and repelling objects to predict when moving them changes stored energy.
Students use a compass test to model how turning a magnet changes the energy stored in a system.

How to use

After a short review of kinetic and potential energy, have pairs work through one test at a time and name the two objects in each system before answering.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-PS3-2

Model how changing the distance between interacting objects changes the potential energy stored in the system.

Preview

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Name Date

Physics Day: Coasters, Balloons and a Compass Needle

Model how distance and direction change the energy stored in a system.

Test 1: the coaster car and Earth

Read the Physics Day notes, then use Table 1.

Physics Day at Lakeside Park

1Every spring, eighth graders from Fairhaven Middle School spend a Physics Day at Lakeside Park, an amusement park near their town. Their teacher, Mr. Rashid Okonedo, asked each team to model how changing the arrangement of two interacting objects changes the potential energy stored in their system. Amani Lindqvist and Joaquín Halloran picked three systems: a coaster car and Earth, two charged balloons, and a compass needle and Earth, which acts like a giant magnet. For each system they had to say what the two objects were and how their arrangement changed the stored energy.

2For Test 1, a ride engineer shared data from the dashboard of the park's Comet coaster. A chain pulls each car, with its riders, up the lift hill, and then the car rolls down and over two smaller hills. Once the chain lets go at the top, no motor pushes the car. With riders aboard, a car has a mass of about 400 kg. Table 1 shows the height of four points above the loading station and the potential energy stored in the car–Earth system at each point, compared with the station. The dashboard rounds the energy to the nearest 10 kJ.

3For Test 2, in the park's science tent, the pair rubbed two balloons with the same wool cloth. They taped one balloon to a stand and hung the other from a thread beside it. Joaquín used a plastic straw to push the hanging balloon toward the taped one, held it at a measured gap, and then pulled the straw away. They measured how far the hanging balloon swung away from the taped one, ran three trials at each gap and averaged them.

4For Test 3, Amani set a compass on the table. She used a plastic stirrer to turn the needle a measured angle away from north and held it there, then pulled the stirrer away. A slow-motion video measured how fast the tip of the needle was moving as it swung back past north. Each angle was tested three times. Amani noted that the needle and Earth never touch, yet whenever the needle is free to turn, it settles pointing north.