How does a rocket lift the Space Shuttle or a new satellite into orbit? How do the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and astronauts engaged in a space walk, maneuver in space? How do they get where they want to go? Do they really push in one direction to travel in a different direction? When an airplane flies how does air moving front to back over the wing cause the airplane to lift against gravity? An airplane's jet engine pushes backward but the airplane moves forward? Here is a simple, repeatable experiment that provides a demonstration and measurement of that action-reaction principle described in Newton's Third Law of Motion. The emphasis is on designing and implementing a measurement method appropriate to the experiment and reaching a reasonable conclusion from the data gathered.
| Relevant Disciplines: | All science & math |
| Grade Level: | 4-12 |
| Adaptable to Other Grades: | No |
| Time Required (class periods): | 1 |
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Additional Resources Available: | Yes |
Next Generation Science Standards addressed in this lesson:
3-5-ETS1-1
3-5-ETS1-2
3-5-ET1-3
MS-PS2-1
MS-PS2-2
MS-ETS1-1
MS-ETS1-4
HS-PS2-1
HS-ETS1-3
| Lesson Resources for Fizz - Pop! Action - Reaction! | |
| File Type/Link | Description |
| Video-mp4 | Shuttle astronaut tries to turn around in microgravity, 0:15, 3.3MB |
| Video-mp4 | Wright brothers deal with Newton's Laws of Motion, 8:04, 91.3MB |
| Video-mp4 | Shuttle astronauts move about the cabin in microgravity, 0:06, 1.31MB |
| Video-mp4 | Shuttle astronauts in microgravity react to movement of the space shuttle, 0:07, 1.58MB |
| Video-mp4 | Narrated launch of Mars Science Laboratory, 3:59, 9.65MB |
| Document-PDF | NASA Liftoff to Learning: Newton In Space, 11 pages, PDF, 189KB |
| Document-text | Image credits for this lesson, 0.8KB |