CK-12 Foundation
Ck 12 Exploration Series: Simulations: Physics: Ramp and Piano
[Free Registration/Login Required] This module has students using a simple machine to learn about the relationship between work, force, and energy.
CK-12 Foundation
Ck 12 Exploration Series: Simulations: Physics: Block and Tackle
[Free Registration/Login Required] A video module where students learn about the relationship between force, work, energy, and mechanical advantage using a simple machine.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Give Yourself a Lift: Lightening the Load With Pulleys
Before the Industrial Age, people relied on muscle power for moving and lifting heavy objects. Here's a project that shows you how you can use your head to make heavy lifting easier on your muscles - and your back.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Effect of Trebuchet Arm Length or Counterweight Mass on Project
A trebuchet is a catapult that uses a counterweight to supply the energy for throwing. They were used in the Middle Ages for attacking castle walls. In this project, you build your own model trebuchet and investigate how design changes...
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Give It a Lift With a Lever
Simple machines allow us to do difficult tasks like lifting objects heavier than our body weight. In this science project you'll build a tabletop lever and measure how much effort it takes to lift an object by altering the length of the...
Technology Student
Technology Student: Mechanisms
This site describes mechanisms and simple machines, and the basic components used to build them.
Technology Student
Technology Student: Gears and Pulleys
This site describes the basics of gears and pulleys, and their use in simple machines.
SEDL
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory: Simple Machines [Pdf]
This large PDF file contains seven lessons on simple machines. Includes illustrations. Requires Adobe Reader.
Other
Solpass: Simple Machines [Pdf]
Worksheet activities for students to practice knowledge about simple machines.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tools and Equipment, Part I
Through a series of activities, students discover that the concept of mechanical advantage describes reality fairly well. They act as engineers creating a design for a ramp at a construction site by measuring four different inclined...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Machines and Tools, Part Ii
In this activity, students gain first-hand experience with the mechanical advantage of pulleys. Students are given the challenge of helping save a whale by moving it from an aquarium back to its natural habitat into the ocean. They set...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Watch It Slide!
Students use inclined planes as they recreate the difficult task of raising a monolith of rock to build a pyramid. They compare the push and pull of different-sized blocks up an inclined plane, determine the angle of inclination, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pulley'ing Your Own Weight
Using common materials (spools, string, soap), students learn how a pulley can be used to easily change the direction of a force, making the moving of large objects easier. They see the difference between fixed and movable pulleys, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Power of Mechanical Advantage
Students learn about the mechanical advantage offered by pulleys in an interactive and game-like manner. By virtue of the activity's mechatronic presentation, they learn to study a mechanical system not as a static image, but rather as a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines From Pyramids to Skyscrapers
Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier, and which people have used to provide mechanical advantage for thousands of years. Students learn about the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Just Plane Simple
This lesson introduces students to three of the six simple machines used by many engineers. These machines include the inclined plane, the wedge and the screw. In general, engineers use the inclined plane to lift heavy loads, the wedge...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Levers That Lift
This lesson plan introduces students to three of the six simple machines used by many engineers: the lever, the pulley, and the wheel-and-axle. In general, engineers use the lever to magnify the force applied to an object, the pulley to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Not So Simple
Students expand upon their understanding of simple machines with an introduction to compound machines. A compound machine - a combination of two or more simple machines - can affect work more than its individual components. Engineers who...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Design and Build a Rube Goldberg
In this two-part activity, students design and build a Rube Goldberg machine. The open ended problem uses the engineering design process and can have a preset purpose, such as rolling a marble into a cup from a distance, or can be left...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Work and Force
Given descriptions, illustrations, graphs, or charts, students will contrast situations where work is done with different amounts of force to situations where no work is done, such as moving a box with a ramp and without a ramp or...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Claw
Students learn about gear ratios and power by operating toy mechanical cranes of differing gear ratios. They attempt to pick up objects with various masses to witness how much power must be applied to the system to oppose the force of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines
Through a five-lesson series with five hands-on activities, students are introduced to six simple machines - inclined plane, wedge, screw, lever, pulley, wheel-and-axle - as well as compound machines, which are combinations of two or...
Concord Consortium
Concord Consortium: Molecular Workbench Showcase: Physics, Mechanics
A collection of simulations representing concepts discussed in a mechanics unit of physics.
Scholastic
Scholastic: Dirtmeister's Science Reporters: Simple Machines: The Wedge
Scholastic provides an in-depth explanation to a simple-machine concept here as The Wedge. Also provides a picture and several examples for understanding.