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Friction and Inertia

Study friction and inertia with this lesson from the MatchCard Science Force and Motion Unit Study.

Homeschool Curriculum Download Arrow weather-instruments

Friction And Inertia MatchCard

Objective: Demonstrate the effects of friction and inertia.

MatchCard: Download below.

This lesson includes the definitions, common examples, hands-on demonstrations, vocabulary discussion, and MatchCard with information pieces and instructors guide for the concepts of inertia and friction.

What Is Friction?

Friction is resistance to a moving object.

Friction is caused by one surface touching another. Ask the student if it would be easier to roller skate on a smooth roller skating rink, or a gravel road. Why?

Here is a simple hands-on demonstration of friction:

Get a marble or small ball
Plan to use a number of different types of surfaces to roll the marble on
- Carpet
- Rubber mat
- Concrete
- Felt
- Wooden floor
- Linoleum
Start by rolling the ball across two obvious examples: like linoleum and a carpet.
Have the students estimate which surfaces would have more friction. First guess by looking, then by touching.
Roll the marble across all of them.

Other Examples of Friction

Brainstorm a list of other examples of friction.

Rubbing your hands together to produce warmth, scraping the windshield to remove frost, and applying brakes to slow down a car or bike are other common examples.

Encourage students to identify examples of friction in daily life over the weeks they are studying Force and Motion.

What Is Inertia?

There are two parts to the definition of inertia:

1. The tendency of a moving object to continue moving at the same speed and direction

Discuss what happens when you are riding in a car and the brakes are applied suddenly. Act out the motion of lurching forward.

Ask them why they think that happens.

If you have a small wagon or toy on wheels demonstrate that effect. Put a stuffed animal in the wagon, push the wagon to get it moving, and then use your foot to stop the wagon suddenly. The stuffed animal should fly forward.

Inertia caused the animal to go forward. The wagon stopped, but the toy did not.

2. The tendency of an unmoving object to remain stationary

Here's a popular demonstration of inertia:

Put an index card on a cup.
Put a dice or coin on top of the card.
Quickly pull the card out from under the object.

What happened? Inertia caused the coin to stay in place.

Vocabulary

"Friction" and "inertia" are scientific concepts described above. But sometimes people use these terms to describe in human events.

Have you ever heard of "friction" when there is a disagreement? How does that compare to friction between objects?

Sometimes when someone is not motivated, they will call that "inertia." Why?

Download the Friction and Inertia MatchCard

This is MatchCard #3 of the Force and Motion Unit Study. You can DOWNLOAD the Friction and Inertia MatchCard HERE.

The 1st page is the worksheet for the student

The 2nd page is the Instructor's Guide with answers labeled.

The 3rd page has the Information Piecesfor students to cut them apart and place them in the correct place on their copy of the Matchcard (first page.)

For more information on how to use the Matchcards, see the MatchCard Science Instructor's Guide.

MatchCard Science

The activities and illustration above are from MatchCard Science, a homeschool science unit study. For the complete Chemistry Unit Study follow this link. This unit study provides: