Motion

Sparking Ideas About Uniform Motion

This activity introduces students to the relationship between the position of an object over time as the object moves along a short distance. Spark timers and constant motion dune buggies yield easily measured data that can be graphed on a scatter plot to yield trend-lines that demonstrate the meaning of the slope of position vs. time and allow students to compare the motion of a buggy at two different speeds.

Timing Is Everything

This activity is used as an introduction to simple motion and the spark timer. Students pull a piece of timer tape through the spark timer and analyze the data on the tape to determine where their hand was moving the fastest and slowest. Position vs. time graphs can be plotted from the data and then analyzed. The students also use their timer tape to construct a histogram to further analyze the motion.