Today in class we
discussed Newton's First Law of Motion, inertia. Immediately, I thought back to
learning about inertia in fifth grade. We often watched videos from the
television show Science Court, which I enjoyed. So when I was assigned the
task of finding a resource that helped to explain Newton's First Law, I knew
exactly what I would pick. The beginning of the episode sets up the characters
and the plot, but aren't really essential parts to the lesson. Starting at
minute 6:56, there are various basic explanations of why inertia works the way
that it does. In the video, motion expert Julie Bean explains that objects in
motion like to stay in motion and objects at rest like to stay at rest. Like
the video we watched in class today, Julie Bean demonstrates how the trick of
pulling a tablecloth out from underneath dishes is an example of inertia. She
also mentions that the reason seatbelts are necessary in cars in due to
inertia. While you are in a car, your body is moving just as fast as the car
is. Therefore, if the car were to stop and you were not wearing a seatbelt, you
would fly out of the windshield because the law states that your body will stay
in motion. She also addresses friction. Another girl in the court room
demonstrates how a skateboard only stops because of the friction between the
board and floor as well as between the board and the air. Julie Bean explains
how if the stenographer were to go into space with a toothbrush and simply let
it go, the toothbrush would be suspended in space forever. However, were the
stenographer to push the toothbrush it would float through space forever. Her
examples relate back to the Science Court's original case of why a
decorative ball on a wire attached to the back of a bicycle (called a baad)
would hit someone on the back of their head when the bicycle stopped.
The examples in the Science Court video helped me understand the first example of inertia that we watched in class today. Ms. Lawrence pushed a cart containing a small ball down a track. When the cart passed a sensor on the track, the ball popped up and fell directly back into the cart. The video below shows a man demonstrating what Ms. Lawrence showed us in class today. Thanks to the explanations in class and the episode of Science Court that I watched, I understand that the ball fell back into the moving cart because it was still moving at the same speed as the cart, due to inertia.
Your video was a really interesting way of relearning about Inertia and Newton's First Law. The video allowed me time to process what they were saying as they taught. This was helpful in learning the concept.
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