Sports Chapter 3: Sports on the Moon

Chapter Challenge
Imagine when astronauts and colonists live on the moon for long periods of time. Students are challenged to write a proposal to NASA that identifies, adapts, or invents a sport that people living in such a colony on the moon would find interesting, exciting, and entertaining.

Chapter Summary
To meet this challenge, students engage in collaborative activities that explore how differences in the atmosphere and gravity between the Earth and on the moon would affect the play of different sports. These experiences engage students in the content from the National Science Education Standards.

Activity Summaries

Physics Principles

Activity One: What Is a Sport?

Students apply their knowledge of sports to identify attributes that define an activity as a sport. From this they begin to consider how differences between the Earth and the moon can affect sports.

• Physical properties of matter on Earth and in space
• Effect of forces on motion

Activity Two: Free Fall on the Moon

Students compare free fall of different objects, then calculate acceleration due to gravity on the moon using measurements obtained from a slow - motion video of an astronaut in space dropping objects.

• Acceleration due to gravity
• Relationship of gravity to free fall

Activity Three: Mass, Weight, and Gravity

Using a simulation that allows comparison of mass, students investigate the ratio of gravity on the Earth to that on the moon and determine force necessary to move objects on the moon.

• Gravity and mass on the Earth and moon
• Inertial and gravitational mass
• Newton's Laws of Motion

Activity Four: Projectile Motion on the Moon

Beginning with scale drawings, students calculate distances
projected objects would travel on the moon.

• Gravity and mass on the Earth and moon
• Effect of gravity on the trajectory of projectiles

Activity Five: Jumping on the Moon

Students measure horizontal and vertical distances of different types of jumping then analyze the force and motion involved in each. Applying what they know about gravity on the moon, they predict distances they could jump on the moon.

• Gravity and mass on the Earth and moon
• Effect of force and gravity on horizontal and vertical motion

Activity Six: Golf on the Moon

Using a variety of balls, students measure the height each bounces when dropped and when projected by a collision. They use this data to infer the speed of a golf ball when hit on Earth and on the moon.

• Collisions
• Coefficient of restitution
• Momentum
• Projectile motion

Activity Seven: Friction on the Moon

Students investigate the force necessary to overcome friction between objects and the surface on which they are moving. They then relate this to gravity and predict force needed to overcome friction against sliding motions on the moon.

• Frictional force
• Gravity and mass on the Earth and moon
• Effect of gravity on friction

Activity Eight: Bounding on the Moon

Using cylinders of different lengths and weights, students explore pendulum motion. They then compare the motion of the pendulums to the swinging motion of human legs when walking.

• Period of pendulum motion
• Effect of gravity on pendulum motion

Activity Nine: "Airy" Indoor Sports on the Moon

Badminton and Wiffle balls are used by students to investigate how air resistance affects motion. They then apply what they know about the ratio of gravity on Earth to that on the moon to predict air resistance on the moon.

• Air resistance
• Free fall
• Projectile motion