Skip to Content

Create Your Own Momentum Problem

After my physical science students finished with their momentum quiz, I gave them the task of creating their own momentum problem. They had to pick a subject for their problem and determine an appropriate mass and velocity.  

create your own momentum problem

Some students converted pounds to kilograms to find the mass.  Others just did a google search to find the mass they were looking for.  Some estimated velocities, and others googled for a velocity as well.  

I gave my students the choice of writing a problem that required solving for momentum, mass, or velocity.  Most of my students took the easy route and wrote a problem asking the reader to solve for momentum.  In retrospect, I would require students to write a multi-step problem with one step involving solving for momentum, one step for mass, and one step for velocity.  

Students were also asked to write up a solution to their problem on notebook paper and attach it to the problem.  

Here is what my students came up with:

I look forward to improving this activity in the future if I continue teaching physical science.  I’m taking my chemistry certification test on President’s Day, so I’ll hopefully be actually certified to teach physical science!

More Activities for Teaching Science

Unknown

Wednesday 15th of February 2017

This has been one of my goals for this year, to have students creating problems. In Algebra 1 we've done word problem posters (but they're really flipbooks) for each unit. They weren't thrilled with me at the beginning of the year but now I get asked, "When are we doing WPP's again?" at least once a week.

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove)

Friday 3rd of March 2017

Sounds awesome!

Comments are closed.