Newton’s Laws: A Fairy Tale
Resources
Hello! On this page you’ll find resources that go along with my book Newton’s Laws: A Fairy Tale, the first book in the Fairy Tale Physics series.
Free Body Diagrams Worksheet + Answer Key
This would be a great worksheet to do after you’ve read the book.
I designed this worksheet so it starts with the basics but then goes through all the classic situations that trip people up when thinking about forces (like how gravity always points down or that two hockey pucks moving different directions can have the exact same diagram.
Phet Forces and Motion Basics
This is a fun simulation to play around with to see the relationship between individual forces, net force, and acceleration.
Exploratorium Activity: Spaghetti Accelerometer
The Exploratorium has a lot of cool hands-on activities you can do. I like this one because it’s a basic version of something our phones use all the time. Plus, I’m always looking for hands-on ways to get a more intuitive sense of acceleration. That’s always helpful for students.
Position, Velocity, Acceleration Maze!
This one doesn’t look like much, but I really love the Phet Maze activity. Position, Velocity, and Acceleration seem super simple, but there are important subtleties that everyone misses. This maze will help students build a better intuitive sense of each of these.
My suggestion:
Leave ‘Practice’ selected. Click and drag the arrow around and watch what happens if r (position), v (velocity), and a (acceleration) are selected.
Once you’ve got a good feel for it, select ‘Level 1’. Try to beat the maze with r, then with v, then with a. (Click ‘reset’ to restart the maze, and then ‘Start’.)
Repeat for Levels 2 and 3! See how fast you can do it!
Phet Forces in 1 Dimension Simulation
This one’s a lot less pretty, but it’s got a great graphing feature if you want to get a bit more quantitative.
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