Classroom Robotics – Science – Day 6 Pg. 1
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Classroom
Robotics
Science –
Day 6
Overview
Today the students will learn about the three laws of
thermodynamics and energy and its different forms.
Workshop Objectives:
Students will be able to:


Identify types of energy
Understand the three laws of thermodynamics
Suitable Ages: 11+
Time Needed: 1h15 min
In this packet
Facilitator’s Guide
Background Notes
Stick Bomb and Energy Worksheet
Stick Bomb and Energy Worksheet – Answer key
Classroom Robotics – Science – Day 6 Pg. 2
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FACILITATOR’S GUIDE
Activity Goal
Today the students will learn about the three laws of thermodynamics and energy and its different forms.
Objectives
Students will be able to:


Identify types of energy
Understand the three laws of thermodynamics
Materials

Stick Bomb and Energy Worksheet

Popsicle sticks (5 or 6 per group/student)
Set Up
Make enough copies of the worksheet before your class and make sure you have enough popsicle sticks
for everyone.
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Procedure
Time
5 min
5 min
20 min
20 min
10 min
10 min
Action
1. As an anticipatory activity, ask the students to summarize what
they learnt in your class the previous week.
2. Ask the students what types of energy they know of. They
should come up with things like electricity, sound, heat, and
maybe Force. If they do come up with force, use this opportunity
to remind them that force is not energy, Energy can produce
force and force can produce energy but they are not the same.
3. Explain to your students the three laws of thermodynamics:
First Law: Conservation of energy – Energy is neither created
nor destroyed, it’s transformed.
Second Law: Entropy - Energy will always flow to the least
Third Law: Absolute zero – There is a minimum temperature:
absolute zero. This means that there is a point where there is
little to no energy.
4. Have your students build a stick bomb and do the worksheet.
You can also do the chain reaction bomb after your students
have each experimented with their own stick bombs.
5. Have the students explain what they learn and discuss with
them the types of energy that go in and out of the stick bomb.
Have the students identify what kind of energies go in and out of
the robot.
6. Go through the NXT sensors with your students and show them
that they sense energy and what type:
Light Sensor: senses light waves (energy from the light), it
senses how much light energy is reflected (or present).
Touch sensor: senses kinetic energy (to a certain extent),
there needs to be motion for it to sense.
Ultrasonic sensor: senses sound energy. It sends an
ultrasound wave that bounces back and then comes back to the
sensor.
Sound sensor: senses sound energy (how much there is).
7. Clean up.
5 min
Materials Needed
Popsicle sticks (5 per
group/student)
Stick bomb and energy worksheet
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Classroom Robotics – Science – Day 6 Pg. 4
The Laws of Thermodynamics
First Law: Conservation of energy – Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it’s transformed. That means that if you
start with an amount of energy, you will be able to transform it however you want but you never have more or less
total energy. For example if you have 100Joules of energy, you can convert it to 10J of heat, 50J of kinetic energy and
40J of sound. You therefore started with 100J of electrical energy and you ended up with 100J of other types of
energy. Students may see converting electrical energy into motion as creation of energy because it seems like a
battery does not do anything, it does not move, it doesn’t really heat up or move or anything, but it has energy stored
in it.
Second Law: Energy will tend to go from the most organized state to the least organized state. The best way to
explain this is to use the following example: If you start with a clean house and you live in it for a week without
cleaning it, in what state will it be at the end? It’s going to be a mess, completely disorganized. Well that’s the second
law of thermodynamics in action: in order to keep something organized, you need to put work into it (= add more
energy). In terms of energy, The easiest way for energy to be disorganized is to transform the initial energy source
into heat and sound. The organization of a system is called entropy.
Third Law: There is a minimum temperature (0Kelvin or absolute zero) which is when a system is in its most
organized state. The amount of work to attain that state is infinite. For example: You can never have a PERFECTLY
clean house, there will always be something wrong with it: a spec of dust randomly falling on the furniture. To get
close to the PERFECTLY clean state, you need to work 24/7 until the end of time and you might get close to perfectly
clean.
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Stick Bomb and Energy
Name __________________________
Class _____________
Directions:
1. Make your stick bomb:
a. Make a V with two sticks
b. Add a third stick on top of the V to make a W
c. Take a fourth stick and place it perpendicular to the middle stick
such that behind the two V sticks and in front of the middle stick.
d. Take the fifth and last stick and place it parallel to the fourth one
such that it’s behind the middle stick and in front of the two V
sticks.
2. Break your stick bomb
3. Rebuild your stick bomb
4. Repeat
Questions:
1. What are the three laws of thermodynamics:
a. First Law
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
b.
Second Law
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
c.
Third Law
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
2. What is energy?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
How is energy different from matter with mass?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Where is energy in the stick bomb?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
4. Does energy have weight? How could you prove this?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
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5.
What does conservation of energy mean? What energy went into the stick bomb? What energy came out?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Name several types of energy.
a. ___________________________________________________________
b. ___________________________________________________________
c.
___________________________________________________________
d. ___________________________________________________________
e. ___________________________________________________________
7. If a stick bomb was sitting on a table what type of energy would be in it?
___________________________________________________________
8. When you released the sticks what type of energy was released?
___________________________________________________________
9. Place all the stick bombs from the class together in a pile and drop one stick bomb on the pile. What happens?
___________________________________________________________
10. Can you think of when this happens in nature?
___________________________________________________________
**Extra Credit: Make a 4 stick, stick bomb, and a 6 stick, stick bomb.
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Stick Bomb and Energy
Teacher
Name __________________________
Class _____________
Directions:
5. Make your stick bomb:
a. Make a V with two sticks
b. Add a third stick on top of the V to make a W
c. Take a fourth stick and place it perpendicular to the middle stick
such that behind the two V sticks and in front of the middle stick.
d. Take the fifth and last stick and place it parallel to the fourth one
such that it’s behind the middle stick and in front of the two V
sticks.
6. Break your stick bomb
7. Rebuild your stick bomb
8. Repeat
Questions:
11. What are the three laws of thermodynamics:
a. First Law Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it’s transformed. Conservation of energy.
b. Second Law Energy will always flow from the least organized (useful) state to the less organized (usually heat).
Entropy
c. Third Law There is an absolute minimum: absolute zero.
12. What is energy? It is the ability to create motion.
How is energy different from matter with mass? Energy cannot be weighted whereas mass can. Energy can
create motion whereas mass can’t.
13. Where is energy in the stick bomb? From the bending of the sticks (elastic energy).
14. Does energy have weight? How could you prove this? No. For example you can charge a battery (add energy
to it) and weight it then empty it and weight it, it will have exactly the same weight.
15. What does conservation of energy mean? What energy went into the stick bomb? What energy came out? It means that
energy can flow from one form to another but it cannot appear or disappear. In the stick bomb, the energy going in is
elastic (bending of the sticks) and kinetic energy (motion, explosion) goes out. Notice that the bomb goes from an
organized state to an unorganized state (entropy law).
16. Name several types of energy. Electric, elastic, potential, kinetic, nuclear, chemical, thermal,
electromagnetic (light), etc.
17. If a stick bomb was sitting on a table what type of energy would be in it? Elastic (because of the bending of the
sticks and potential (due to the weight), because of the elevation.
18. When you released the sticks what type of energy was released? Kinetic Energy
19. Place all the stick bombs from the class together in a pile and drop one stick bomb on the pile. What happens?
When the first one explodes, all the other ones tend to follow, it’s called a chain reaction.
20. Can you think of when this happens in nature? That’s what happens in a nuclear reactor: an atom explodes which causes
two other atoms to explode and so on. In the end the progression of exploded atoms goes:
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024…