Inertia Lab

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This week Mr. Hatfield's 8th grade science classes are experimenting with the principle of inertia according to Newton's First Law of Motion, the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion; this includes changes to its speed, direction, or state of rest. It is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at constant velocity. (Wikipedia)

Students participated in a lab where they placed a wooden circle over a beaker set on a table. They then stacked pennies on the top of the wooden circle. After stacking the pennies, a student would pull the wooden circle out from under the stack of pennies. If this is completed quickly enough in the correct motion, the pennies would fall in a straight line into the beaker below. Students competed to see how many pennies they could stack and drop into the beaker. Some classes reached over 60 pennies!