Sugar Lesson Plan

Sugar Lesson Plan

Age/Level : 14-17

This lesson plan is targeted for students between age 14 to 17, so they can understand physics very well. They all must know the basic of physics.

Skills : 

Here, we will help learn students about basic of physics. The main skills being taught are Newtons Laws of Motion (first, second, and third law). 

Newton's First Law :

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This law is often called "the law of inertia".

Newton's Second Law :

Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object). It can be mathematically written as

F = ma

where F is force acting on the particle, m is the mass of particle and a is acceleration of object (can be gravity too).

Newton's Third Law :

For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action. 

The conservation of momentum states that the combined mass times velocity or momentum of two objects should remain the same if not affected by outside forces. Therefore if one fast object hits another stationary object (neglect air resistance and other outside forces) then the other will gain momentum and the first will lose momentum but the combined momentum of the two objects will be the same as before they interacted. Therefore you get the equal reaction that newton talked about.

Note : 

What is Force :

A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. Forces only exist as a result of an interaction.

Objectives : 

Here students will learn the basic concepts of physics with the help of physics activity as mentioned above. The teacher needs to explain only once to the students, then if a child has a doubt the teacher must help. We will create a few machines to clear the basic concepts of physics.

Summary : 

Firstly, you will need to know how to install Sugar on by virtualization it on their existing laptop or to create a Sugar on a stick.

You can read more here :

http://thesugaractivity.blogspot.com/2014/12/everything-about-sugar.html

Now, open Physics activity. 

By default, you will see tools on the toolbar like Draw tool, circle tool, triangle tool, box tool, grab, motor, pin, joint, chain...

The teacher should show students how to create objects like circle, box and using tools like polygon tool. The teacher can demonstrate students by separating them in groups, so they can discuss and learn in a more better way. Also teacher should show them how to save their activities.

Here, for example, the students will need to create three sample activities following Newton's three laws of motion. Students are free to discuss about the basic like how to create objects and else. The teacher should keep an eye on each student if they are performing well or have any doubts. 

As mentioned earlier, it would be good to form groups of students to explain them initially

In Physics activity, the value of gravity is taken as 9.0 ms^-2

Instructions :

We will make an example for each law.

At first, we will make an example based on Newton's First Law. See the video for example.

Then comes the second law, make something like this. Here when the object slides down, it gains acceleration until it comes to rest.

The third law, is about that every action has an opposite reaction. See the example video, after the ball collides with the block, the ball will slow down as it has given some energy to the block to move.

After all of the students have completed creating the following examples, the teacher must evaluate it. He/she must check that the student has got the concepts clear and the examples should work as they are stated by Newton's laws of motion. Now teacher should as questions based on this activity, to check whether they know everything or not.

Finally, the teacher should take a test, and ask them to make at least one machine based on each law. This way, students would learn better as competition always helps winning.

By the following examples, students will at least have basic idea about Newton's Laws of Motion and more.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.