Students consider how objects in contact and at a distance exert forces on each other. They start by observing the movement of existing toys before building their own toy prototypes. They engage in activities prompted by the driving question, “How can we design moving toys that other children can build?” Plans for redesigning their prototypes are developed through investigations and scientific models. By the end of the unit, students incorporate all they have learned about the forces that cause their toy to move into a final design for their chosen toy. 

• Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.

• Make observations and measurements of an object’s motion to predict future motion.

This unit has a creativity and critical thinking focus:

• Propose, produce, and revise a personally novel moving toy and a model of how unbalanced forces cause objects to start moving

• Reflect on the strengths, weaknesses, and limits of prototypes and models according to different criteria

Resources 

Web and print

• Investigation and observation sheets for students

• Student directions for building toy prototypes (written or video)

• Driving Question Board to keep track of class and student questions

• Interactive simulation model of balanced and unbalanced forces

Other Resources

• Household items for building toy prototypes (milk cartons, soda bottles, straws, paper clips, small disks for wheels, cardstock)

• Air rocket toys

• Materials (pens, post-it notes etc.) to enable students to post questions and ideas to the driving question board.

Opportunities to adapt, extend, and enrich

• This mini-unit is based on portions of the first two learning sets in a sequence of four learning sets. The remaining learning sets have students examine other forces (e.g., frictional, gravitational, electrical, magnetic) and design engineering solutions to improve their toy.

• Remaining learning sets, along with additional STEM project-learning units and related resources can be found at https://sprocket.lucasedresearch.org/portal and https://create4stem.msu.edu/

• ML-PBL Units were co-developed by the Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning Project at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan 2018–2019.

• ML-PBL units are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

• The work was funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation.

English Version

•  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yGdikyp-CYagA73xVQGS-lVvWBd_h86jhSOhu2nBHHg/edit?usp=sharing

Hindi Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kgy1Ic08uZbmnLhooaWG0q5nAWf_n-zm1GILg4FPtM0/edit?usp=sharing

Gujarati Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aXGx7ebeuyu_k8El9Ni7STwcCYOhro2TAUjiNbDR6tM/edit?usp=sharing

Kannada Version

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rZLPEe_S4GTb93FYhuclywfK4Yee_nsF5nU3v8LIdbA/edit?usp=drive_link