Hosting a Motion Museum: A Hands-On Showcase of Force and Motion

Hosting a motion museum is a great way for students to demonstrate their understanding of force and motion while inviting guests to your classroom to see what your students are learning.

Motion Museum
Time: 2 hours split into 4 days (30 minutes each). On days 1-3 students will plan and create their exhibit. On the 4th day students will show off their exhibit to the museum visitors.

Materials:

Poster Boards
A variety of items for students to create their exhibit. Here are some ideas:
Metersticks
Toy cars
Marbles and/or balls
Balloons
Smoothie Straws
String
Clothespins
Stopwatches
Cardboard for building ramps

Steps:

Students will work in partners or groups of 3.
They need to decide on a demonstration they want to model to show the different things they have learned about: forces, motion, speed, gravity and friction.
After students have designed and tested their demonstration they will create a poster to show the science behind the demonstration. The poster should include:
A drawing of their demonstration.
An explanation of what happens in their demonstration.
The scientific principle their demonstration shows.
During the motion museum students will show visitors their hands on demonstration and explain the science behind the topic. They should be prepared to demonstrate it multiple times.

Toy car being pushed next to a meter stick to demonstrate how forces impact the speed of an object.

FAQ

What do I need to have prepared for this motion museum?

Make sure you have materials available for students. Toy cars, cardboard, string, balloons, marbles, etc. See a more detailed list below. You can allow students to bring items from home (paper towel rolls, rolling toys, flying toys, etc).
Have ideas for demonstrations students can do if they are unable to think of any ideas themselves.
Make sure to check in with each group about their demonstration so you can give them feedback and help them make needed changes.
Decide who you want to invite to this motion museum. You can invite families or you can just invite non homeroom staff members. You can also invite other grade levels. Younger students would love to visit an older class and see what projects they will get to work on.

What materials did you use?

To help students get started, we provided them with the same resources we had used throughout our Forces and Interactions unit in previous lessons.

Toy Cars*
Meter Sticks*
Stopwatches*
Smoothie Straws*
Balloons
String
Clothespins
Mini Poster Boards*
We chose mini poster boards because students really don’t need that much space.
Saving Money & Materials Tip: If you have students write and draw their work on regular paper they can carefully tape their work on the poster board. Then it can be removed later and the poster boards can be reused!

Before spending any money, take a look around your classroom, check with teammates, and encourage students to bring in items from home. You may be surprised how many useful materials are already available. Most investigations work perfectly well with everyday objects, and we always recommend exhausting free options before purchasing anything. Things students can bring from home: paper towel rolls, cardboard to make ramps, balls and more.

If you do need to purchase supplies, the links above simply share the materials we found to be especially valuable to these investigations.