How do we find out whether the forces acting on an object are balanced or unbalanced? Learn in this video from the "Forces and Motion" chapter of the Virtual School GCSE / K12 Physics.

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Teach the world.

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Bridges come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and lengths and are found all over the world. It is important that bridges are strong so they are safe to cross. Design and build a your own model bridge. Test your bridge for strength using a force sensor that measures how hard you pull on your bridge. By observing a graph of the force, determine the amount of force needed to make your bridge collapse.

A zip line is a way to glide from one point to another while hanging from a cable. Design and create a zip line that is safe for a hard-boiled egg. After designing a safety egg harness, connect the harness to fishing line or wire connected between two chairs of different heights using a paper clip. Learn to improve your zip line based on data. Attach a motion sensor at the bottom of your zip line and display a graph to show how smooth a ride your egg had!

What is speed? And how do we calculate it?

Phenomena:A car has run out of gas on the railroad tracks. It is stopped in the middle of the tracks and is blocking the lane. An oncoming train sees the car, applies the brakes but cannot stop and crashes into the parked car. Storyline: Students are playing with toys and notice that each time one car is moving and runs into another object that is not moving, the second object moves. Sometimes it moves far and other times it only moves a short distance. The students want to find out why toys move various distances when objects come into contact with it. PE Alignment: MS-PS2-1 Apply Newton’s Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects. MS-PS2-2 Plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object.Image source: "UP 5525 Crosses Washington Street in West Chicago" by vxla at https://www.flickr.com/photos/vxla/4614440328  CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) 

Repeated motion is present everywhere in nature. Learn how to 'make waves' with your own movements using a motion detector to plot your position as a function of time, and try to duplicate wave patterns presented in the activity. Investigate the concept of distance versus time graphs and see how your own movement can be represented on a graph.

In this activity, students interact with 12 models to observe emergent phenomena as molecules assemble themselves. Investigate the factors that are important to self-assembly, including shape and polarity. Try to assemble a monolayer by "pushing" the molecules to the substrate (it's not easy!). Rotate complex molecules to view their structure. Finally, create your own nanostructures by selecting molecules, adding charges to them, and observing the results of self-assembly.