Where Did It Go?
Ana's cart rolls into Ben's block and stops dead. The block, which was sitting still, slides away.
The cart has stopped moving. What happened to its energy?
Page 1
Science · Grade 4 Science
Chapter 1: Energy and Motion
It does not vanish. It goes somewhere.
Ana's cart rolls into Ben's block and stops dead. The block, which was sitting still, slides away.
The cart has stopped moving. What happened to its energy?
Make your guess to turn the page.
Still to come: 9 pages · Words to Know · What We Learned · 4 questions · Explain It in Writing · Ask and Wonder
The idea this lesson is working on — Children say energy is "used up" when something stops. The story makes the handover visible: the cart stops and a still block starts. Then it asks the harder question — the block stops too, so where did its energy go? — and answers it with warm rubbed hands and a rug that stops the block four times sooner. Ask: something that was still started moving; where did it get the energy?
Four ways energy moves — By something moving and hitting something else, by heat flowing, by light traveling, and by electric current in a wire. Almost every everyday transfer is one of those four.