No matter what grade you teach, at some point you will surely need to introduce your students to the three Laws of Motion developed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica took Newton two years to write and was the culmination of more than 20 years of thinking.
That was more than 300 years ago. Today, we live in the YouTube era. Videos allow us to quickly summarize important scientific concepts like forces and motion in dramatic ways that your students will understand and remember. We’ve gathered some excellent examples here. Enjoy!
If you find a video on forces and motion that you’d like to share with us, please leave a comment!
Let’s start with Bill Nye, who clearly knows a few things about pushes and pulls:
At less than two minutes, this video does a great job of explaining the concepts of gravity, force, and work:
Galileo was right! Your students will be amazed by this video of a feather and the bowling ball… dropped in the world’s largest vaccuum chamber.
While we’re at it, how about footage of Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott on the Moon in 1971. He dropped a feather and a hammer from the same height and found that they hit the lunar surface at the same time.
All three of Newton’s Laws of Motion are explained here in an easy-to-follow animation:
This video offers more advanced information on Newton’s Laws of Motion, suitable for the high school level:
What’s worse: two cars colliding while each is traveling at 50 mph, or one car hitting a brick wall at 100 mph? In this clip, Bill Nye didn’t quite get the results he expected, but that’s okay… it’s SCIENCE!
Here’s a great egg-spinning trick that nicely demonstrates the concept of inertia:
And one more song… “Gravity” from Veritasium’s Derek Muller.
