HS-PS2-3 | Design For Collision Safety

Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision.

Clarification statement: Examples of evaluation and refinement could include determining the success of the device at protecting an object from damage and modifying the design to improve it. Examples of a device could include a football helmet or a parachute.

Assessment boundary: Assessment is limited to qualitative evaluations and/or algebraic manipulations.

Level 5Level 4Level 3Level 2Level 1

Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design and build a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision and analyze the forces acting on the object during the collision, and use this analysis to refine the divide to further minimize the force of impact during the collision.

Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision.

Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design a device that reduces the force on a macroscopic object during a collision and explain how this device reduces the force, or given the design of a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object, apply scientific and engineering ideas to describe how this device can be refined to reduce this force, or given data for a mechanism designed to minimize the force on a macroscopic object, evaluate the effectiveness of the mechanism based upon given constraints.

Use an algebraic representation to describe how a given device affects the force, time, change in momentum, and/or change in velocity of a macroscopic object during an interaction.

Identify a device from those provided that reduces the force on a macroscopic object during an interaction, or identify an explanation from those provided for how a given device reduces the force on a macroscopic object.

Resources

Examples and discussion of resources for the learning, teaching, and assessment of HS-PS2-3.

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Assessment

What assessment of HS-PS2-3 might look like on a NY state exam.

World Record Jumps Q5

NGSS Dimensions

Performance expectation HS-PS2-3 was developed using the following elements from the NRC document A Framework for K-12 Science Education:

Science and Engineering Practices

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
- Apply scientific ideas to solve a design problem, taking into account possible unanticipated effects.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

PS2.A: Forces and Motion
- If a system interacts with objects outside itself, the total momentum of the system can change; however, any such change is balanced by changes in the momentum of objects outside the system.
ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution
- Criteria may need to be broken down into simpler ones that can be approached systematically, and decisions about the priority of certain criteria over others (trade-offs) may be needed.

Crosscutting Concepts

Cause and Effect
- Systems can designed to cause a desired effect.

Page contributors: Caroline Leonard, Conrad Richman

Physics | HS. Forces and Interactions