The Teacher Guide is the driving and unifying component of this unit, Contact Forces. In this unit, students investigate the phenomenon of collisions and what happens to the objects that collide. The subtitle of this unit is Why do things get damaged when they hit each other? This is a phenomenon that students experience when they see any two objects collide. What happens to the shape each of the colliding objects? How does the mass of each object affect the damage in a collision? How do the speeds of the two objects affect the nature of the collision? Can we use the concept of force to help explain collisions? This unit allows students to observe collision phenomena in detail and then start asking questions, formulating explanations, setting up and conducting activities and research, and working with classmates to analyze the shared experience and formulate new questions and developing new strategies for answering them.

CKSci Middle School is an enhanced republication of the OpenSciEd Middle School project–with a unique, integrated Core Knowledge science literacy component.

Learn more about the CKSci Middle School Program