Work and energy introduction

Kids have heard the word energy tons of times in their lives.  Mine usually hear something like, "Go run around outside and use up some of your energy!"

To kick off our energy unit, Athena read Energy Makes Things Happen which introduced the scientific idea of energy. It wasn't very hard for my kiddoes to take their basic understanding and apply it to energy in science.  We discussed different forms of energy that they are already familiar with-- light, sound, heat, etc.  We also briefly discussed fuels and where we get our energy.

Something has energy when it is capable of doing work, although the scientific definition of WORK was harder for the kiddoes to understand. We discussed work at the beginning of our simple machines unit, but it was very brief, so we learned it all over again now with energy.  When a force moves an object over a distance, work is done.

 

We reviewed distance by measuring the width of apples, height of ourselves, length of the room, etc. (and everyone loves a good excuse to play with the measuring tape). We reviewed force quickly, too, although they have a pretty good understanding of force. Then we moved on to a few easy examples of work: if I hold a feather up high, then drop it, that is work because the force of gravity moves the feather the distance down to the ground.   If I push an apple across the table, my force is a push and the distance is across the table, so I am doing work.

They really had fun when we tried some examples where NO work was done.  I asked them to push the kitchen wall as hard as they could.  Since the wall doesn't move, no work was done-- but they sure were tired for having done no work. lol

The kids always enjoy it when I can find a song related to what we're going over.  SchoolHouse Rock! has some good ones, although not much related to science.  However, we have found a treasure for physics-related songs; a science teacher made parodies of well-known oldies, rewriting them with ideas from science.  Most of them explain not only the terms, but their units and some formulas.  We are only doing a basic overview of the ideas of physics and leaving the math for our next run-through, but the kids still end up memorizing the songs and singing them all the time.  This week's song, "The Work and Power Song," was no exception.  These songs are great because my kiddoes already know the tune and because the lyrics include a lot of repetition that they can catch and easily remember.

I get excited when the kiddoes can take a concept they already know (such as energy) and bridge the gaps to understand how science defines that concept.

--Little Miss Crazy