Seventh graders roll a special can down the hallway and it rolls back to them.  They start four pendulums.  Two eventually stop and two keep swinging.  Wait…What?  What’s going on?!  The 7th graders are trying to find the answers to these questions as they study energy.  As part of this study, they were challenged to develop a set of experiments to answer the following questions…

               What is the relationship between mass and kinetic energy?                                       What is the relationship between speed and kinetic energy?

The trickiest part for them was to figure out how they were actually going to measure kinetic energy.  With some deep thinking and constructive debate each group utilized some kind of collision to collect quantitative data and measure the kinetic energy of their object.

The collaboration involved in designing these experiments wasn’t easy.  More than once groups have found themselves disagreeing or unable to move forward because they couldn’t reach a consensus on how to proceed.  These experiences led us to have a wonderful conversation about the risk of sharing ideas, the need to feel heard, and sometimes the need to let go.