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7 Explain

ACCIDENT CHALLENGE

Learning Set 1

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What factors affect energy transfer?
The McFarland City Council is excited to hear about the results of your investigation. They hope to use the evidence from your investigation to write proposals that could reduce the number of severe car accidents. However, before you can provide them with this information you will need to make meaning out of your data by interpreting your results. Part 1 of 3: Making Claims Your first step to interpret your results is to identify trends and develop claims. Trends are patterns in your data that you can see over several examples. A claim is a statement about what those trends mean. For example, suppose you did a different experiment where you varied the mass of Vehicle B, and you find that Vehicle B with less mass traveled a further distance. This would be a trend. Your claim would then be a statement: When Vehicle B has less mass, it travels a further distance when hit by Vehicle A. You will now review your own and class data (including line graphs) to identify trends and make claims. Identify a trend in your data to make one claim. Record your trend and claim on Student Sheet 1.7.

GROUP

The citizens of McFarland have made many claims such as: the loaded trucks are causing more severe accidents and the posted speed limit on Park Avenue is too high. However, these claims are not considered valid, until they are supported by evidence. Evidence is the data that was collected during your investigation and statements of evidence should contain measurements or observations. An example of evidence to support the sample claim above would be: The lower mass Vehicle B traveled a mean of 121 centimeters and the higher mass Vehicle B traveled a mean of 75 centimeters after ten trials.

GROUP

Review your data from your investigation and write one to two sentences that state your evidence to support your claim on Student Sheet 1.7.

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Part 2 of 3: Add to your Understanding: Factors That Affect Energy Transfer You have now stated a claim and supported it with evidence to interpret your results. However, your claim and evidence was based on your model of accidents at the intersection. In order to transfer your results from your model to the actual accident scene, you will need to develop an understanding of the science knowledge that supports your claim and evidence. This is important to be able to apply your claims to situations outside your model. Science information provides the background for explaining how and why things happen the way they do. Gaining this understanding will allow you to apply your knowledge from your investigation to the intersection in the town of McFarland.

In collisions, energy is transferred from one object to another. During your investigation, energy was transferred when the truck hit Vehicle B. This energy transfer is indicated by the change in motion of Vehicle B. We can transfer this information to our car accidents in McFarland. During each accident, energy was transferred from the strike vehicle to the target vehicle. However, each accident had a different amount of energy transfer and that amount determined the severity of the accident. The city council decided to investigate two factors that would affect this energy transfer: mass and speed.

By investigating mass and speed, you were able to observe that Vehicle B varied its change in motion when hit by the unloaded and loaded trucks at different speeds. These changes in mass and speed affected the distance Vehicle B traveled. This distance is an indicator of energy so therefore, we can state: Mass and speed are factors that affect the energy of a moving object. In your investigation, mass and speed determine the energy of the truck. When truck has greater energy, it transfers a greater amount of energy to Vehicle B, therefore causing a greater change in motion.

We have now determined that mass and speed affect the energy of a moving object. We have also determined that there are conditions when the truck has a larger amount of energy and when the truck has a smaller amount of energy. What conditions cause our truck to have more

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energy? How can we represent different amounts of energy using the factors of mass and speed?

In your groups, you are going to discuss these questions and decide how to represent a large amount energy and a small amount of energy in terms of mass and speed. Your group will then draw a picture of an object with a large amount of energy and picture of an object with a small amount of energy. In each picture, represent speed and mass to show the amount of energy of the object. Draw an object with a large amount of energy and an
GROUP

object with a small amount of energy on Student Sheet 1.7. In each picture, show the speed and mass of the object.

When your group has finished drawing your picture, give it to your teacher to post in the front of the classroom. Your teacher will now facilitate a class discussion on these representations of different amounts of energy. As you examine the objects representing of different amounts of energy, think about these questions to participate in the class discussion:

What do you notice about the objects representing larger amount of energy? What do you notice about the objects representing the smaller amounts of energy? How are mass and speed expressed in these pictures?

How does mass affect energy? You may have drawn a larger, heavier object to represent a larger amount of energy. In your investigation, you may have discovered that the loaded truck caused Vehicle B to have a greater change in motion when tested at the same speed as the empty truck. As this change in motion is an indicator of energy, the loaded truck has more energy than the empty truck at the same speed. Even though both trucks were the same size and shape, the loaded truck had more energy. Therefore, we can state: Mass has a direct relationship to the amount of energy; when the mass of an object is increased and all other conditions remain the same, the

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amount of energy of a moving object increases. In order to demonstrate this concept visually, you will watch the following video, which shows the difference in energy transfer in collisions between objects of different masses.

Watch Video 7

How does speed affect energy? In your drawing of an object with a large amount of energy, you may have tried to show that it was moving fast. As you collaborated with your classmates and examined your line graph data, you may have noticed the trend that when both the loaded or unloaded truck was released at higher heights (greater speeds), Vehicle B had a greater change in motion after the collision. This distance is an indicator of energy, so you can conclude that by increasing the speed of the truck, you increased the energy of the truck. Therefore we can state: Speed has a direct relationship with energy; if there is an increase in speed and all other conditions remain the same, the amount of energy of an object increases. In order to demonstrate this concept visually, you will watch the following video, which shows the difference in energy of objects moving at different speeds.

Watch Video 8

This scientific information will support your claim and evidence from your investigation to develop an explanation that will allow the McFarland City Council to write proposals to reduce the severity of the accidents. You will now record this scientific information to support your claim and evidence. Write one or two sentences or phrases in the Science Content Knowledge box on Student Sheet 1.7.

STUDENT

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Part 3 of 3: Update the Challenge Organizer In Section 1.1, you learned that an engineer is a person who applies their science and math knowledge to develop a solution to a problem. You also learned that recording information is very important in engineering. Before we move on to addressing accident challenge, we will return to the challenge organizer to record what we have learned. You will complete this individually and then share your updates with the class. Complete What we have learned column on your individual Challenge Organizer

STUDENT

Your teacher will now ask some students to share this information with the class to update the class Challenge Organizer.