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Unit 5: Energy (Part 2) Page 12
Activities, Experiments, Projects
Lesson 1: Potential Energy
Note: This section is an abbreviated overview of the experiments online.
Experiment: 4. Drop the ball.
Whack-a-POW! 5. Whackapow! Now take a look at
how deep the ball went and how
In this experiment, you’re looking far the flour spread. (If all your
for two different things: first you’ll balls are the same size but
be dropping objects and making different weights it’s worth it to
craters in a bowl of flour to see measure the size of the splash and
how energy is transformed from the depth the ball went. If they are
potential to kinetic, but you’ll also not, don’t worry about it. The
note that no matter how carefully different sizes will affect the splash
you do the experiment, you’ll never and depth erratically.
get the same exact impact location
twice. 6. Try it with different balls. Be
sure to record the mass of each
To get started, find several balls of ball and calculate the potential
different weights no bigger than energy for each ball.
the size of a baseball. Golf ball,
racket ball, ping pong ball, marble ach one of the balls you dropped
etc. are good choices. Also fill a had a certain amount of potential
good size container or mixing bowl energy that depended on the mass
with flour or corn starch (or any of the ball and the height it was
kind of light powder). If you’re dropped from. As the ball dropped
measuring your results, you’ll also the potential energy changed to
need a tape measure (or yard kinetic energy until, “whackapow”,
stick) and a spring scale (or the kinetic energy of the ball
kitchen scale). collided with and scattered the
flour. The kinetic energy of the ball
1. Fill the container about 2 inches transferred kinetic energy and heat
or so deep with the flour. energy to the flour.
2. Weigh one of the balls (If you For Grades 9-12:
can, weigh it in grams).
Calculate the gravitational
3. Hold the ball about 3 feet (one potential energy of the ball.
meter) above the container with Take the mass of the ball, multiply
the flour.
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