Science Behind Sledding at WES

Mrs. Hanauer-Milne took her students outdoors to explore the science behind sledding.  Students discussed Newton’s Laws of Motion, forces and friction.  Students tested two sled designs by doing timed runs on each sled.  One sled was long and narrow while the other one was an LL Bean snow tube. 

This activity was a kick off for a unit that will culminate with student-produced 3D sleds and a toboggan run to demonstrate their understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Woven into this unit will be a group novel, The Giver, in which they will look for signposts and also how “forces” within the story drive the plot or cause characters to behave in certain ways.  They’ll use forced analogies to foster creative thinking, and students will create a forced analogy of their own to connect their sleds to their books.