Force and Motion, First Edition

The world is filled with motion. Some motion happens without human intervention: Earth revolves around the Sun, snowflakes fall to the ground, waves surge across the sea, salmon swim up rivers to fulfill their destinies. Other motions are under our control: clock hands faithfully monitor time, jet planes streak across the sky, baseballs fly over center field fences, bicycles race in the tour de France. Both natural and designed motions are part of our perception of the world-there is nothing special about them. Welcome to force and motion. This is where you and your students will start to uncover explanations for why things work in the ways we have expected them to work for our entire lives.

Investigations in this course:

1. Here to There introduces students to motion as a change of position, and distance as the magnitude of a change of position.
2. In Speed students learn that speed is the rate at which an object changes position.
3. In Comparing Speeds students learn how to analyze and represent speed to solve problems.
4. In Representing Motion students learn to represent motion events as graphs.
5. Acceleration introduces students to acceleration as changing velocity, and they learn ways to determine acceleration when time and distance data are known.
6. In Force students are introduced to forces, the ways they interact, and their effects, including friction and motion.
7. In Gravity students learn that gravity is a universal force pulling objects to Earth with predictable acceleration.
8. In Momentum students learn to analyze collision interactions in terms of inertia, momentum, and impulse.

The Dotcar software included with FOSS Middle School Force and Motion is incompatible with Mac OS 10.7 and higher. A Windows-based computer or older Mac is required. We apologize for the inconvenience.