Activities to Teach Forms of Energy and Energy Transformation — Poet Prints Teaching

Project-Based Learning: Energy Machines

Project-based learning is a great way to cap off a science unit. They can check for student understanding without having to make students sit down for a timed test (that doesn’t always show understanding anyways!)

In this project, students will have the opportunity to design and build an Energy Machine.

This machine will have the power to transform energy into different forms. As a simple example, some students might build a machine that uses a hair dryer to melt a piece of chocolate. (In this example, electric energy transforms into heat energy!)

Students will create a blueprint, gather materials and build a prototype to show their classmates. Not only is this project a fun way for students to demonstrate their learning, it is also a great way for them to use their creativity! 

The full instructions, planning pages, and assessment rubric are included in the Energy Unit.

even more Energy Experiments

There are SO many experiments that you could do with your class to demonstrate the various types of energy. So let’s take a look at a few types of energy activities:

• Magnets: Give students magnets and have them locate things that are magnetic and things that are not. You can also find some other fun magnet activities in this blog post dedicated to Magnet Activities!

• Shooting Rubber Bands: Give students different sized rubber bands and teach them how to stretch the rubber bands and shoot them across the classroom (or field outside) to see which bands fly the furthest. BUT make sure to teach them about safety so no one gets hurt.

• Gravity: Have students drop various objects from the same high so they can see that all objects fall at the same speed.

• Rubber Band Guitar: Students can experiment using rubber bands stretched over various objects to explore the sounds created when stretching different shaped elastics.

• Egg Drop Experiment: Have students design a contraption that will protect a raw egg when it is dropped from a high place. How can you protect the egg from the kinetic energy it is about to experience?

As you can see, there are a plethora of experiments you can have students do while they are exploring the types of energy and energy transformation. Google has TONS of great ideas!