OpenSciEd is a nonprofit organization that brings together educators, philanthropic organizations, curriculum developers, and professional development providers to improve science education through the development and implementation of high-quality, freely available science instructional materials. While this work has begun at the middle school level with Grades 6 through 8, the goal of OpenSciEd is to ensure that all educators, from elementary to high school, have access to a free, coherent, rigorous, research-based set of instructional materials that will support all students in meeting the vision for science literacy described in A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards.
Score: 9
Awarded the NGSS Design Badge
Science Discipline: Physical Science
Length: Unit
Year Reviewed: 2019
This unit launches with a slow-motion video of a speaker as it plays music. In the previous unit, students developed a model of sound, but this unit opens the door for students to investigate the cause of a speaker’s vibration as opposed to the effect.
Students dissect speakers to explore the inner workings, and they build homemade cup speakers to manipulate the parts of the speaker. They identify that speakers of all kinds have some of the same parts--a magnet, a coil of wire, and a membrane. Students investigate each of these parts to figure out how they work together in the speaker system. Along the way, students manipulate the components (e.g., changing the strength of the magnet, number of coils, current direction) to see how this technology could be modified to apply to systems in very different contexts, like MagLev trains, junkyard magnets, and electric motors.
Link to Materials
OpenSciEd Unit 8.3: How can a magnet move another object without touching it?
NGSS Design Badge
Awarded: Feb 11, 2020
Awarded To: OpenSciEd Unit 8.3: How Can a Magnet Move Another Object Without Touching It?
The NGSS Design Badge is awarded only to the version of this unit that was reviewed. If any modifications are made to this unit, the revised version cannot be promoted as having earned the badge.
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