On this worksheet, students are introduced to the science of kinetic energy through the context of snowboarding competitions. By working with tables showing snowboarders of varying mass and speed, they get a hands-on lesson on how these variables affect kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy is the energy an object has when it's moving. To help young kids understand this, you can compare it to running across the playground. The faster you run, the more energy you feel. You must keep going; that's like speed with kinetic energy. Now, imagine you're pushing a heavy toy or a light toy down a hill. The heavy toy rolls with more "oomph" because it has more mass, just like objects with more mass have more kinetic energy. So, kinetic energy is all about how fast something moves (its speed) and how much stuff it has (its mass). The more speed or mass, the more energy it has to keep moving.