Fourth Grade Collisions

Fourth graders continued to learn  about kinetic and potential energy  by building a basic egg cart. They released the egg cart from different heights on a ramp and collected data on how far the vehicle traveled from each of the different starting positions. Students discovered that more potential energy lead to a faster speed and a further distance traveled for their vehicles. Next students learned about two different types of collisions, elastic and inelastic. They then build a second cart and and had the opportunity to collide these two vehicles on a ramp from different heights to observe  different types of collisions created. In the last collision activity students added weight to their vehicles so they could observe how different size vehicles can change the types of collisions created.