Energy!

Energy!

Today’s lesson was on different forms of energy (such as light, thermal or kinetic) and converting between different types of active and stored energies. In addition to seeing a demonstrations of the comeback can, students were also able to investigate energy conversions at workstations set up around the classroom. The hands-on portion of the lab allowed them to experiment with several of the different ways that the forms of energy can be converted from one to the other: gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy, kinetic energy into elastic energy, and chemical energy into either light or thermal energy.

Students bounced balls in a tube and measured their return bounce level.  This activity allowed them to quantify and understand the energy conversions that happen when a ball is bounced. The ball starts with gravitational energy that is converted to kinetic energy as it falls and then becomes elastic energy when it reaches the bottom of the tube. When the ball bounces back up, the elastic energy becomes kinetic again.

In the Chemical Corner station, students created chemical reactions in which the resulting released energy could be seen as a glow, bubbles, or a color change. They enjoyed wearing the goggles and using test tubes to evoke the reactions!

But the most important lesson the students learned today was this: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.