[PDF Printable] Basic 1-D Kinematics Worksheet

Your wizard mentor has sent you on another errand, and the instructions are scrawled on a discarded sandwich wrapper — mixed in with his grocery list, a note to look for his cat, and something illegible that might say "cheese rabbit." What follows is a twenty-five-step descent: down a trapdoor, through a tunnel, across a cavern where you pass the time throwing bat skulls at the ceiling, and over a chasm lit by phosphorescent mushrooms. At the bottom, sitting on a patch of glowing crystal, is a cat. The cat has questions about dragons. Every step of the quest is a physics problem, and the story doesn't continue until you solve it.

Written by Sarah Allen and illustrated in full color by Sheila Elizan. Best suited to grades 8–10 — see below for details on fit.

What's inside

• 14 pages — a continuous illustrated story broken into 25 numbered prompts, 23 of which are calculations (two are jokes, and the story keeps moving)
• The three formulas students need are printed on the first page — v = Δd/Δt, a = Δv/Δt, and d = ½at² — so no reference sheet is required
• Constant-velocity problems, free fall from rest, objects thrown straight up, and uniform acceleration from rest
• Several problems hand students their data inside the illustration rather than the paragraph — a rate scrawled beside a dirt pile, a diameter and a stopwatch reading tucked into a thought bubble — which gives kids who bounce off dense word problems another way in
• Answer boxes built into the page, plus name, date, and period fields at the top
• Some answers feed the next problem — #2 uses the result from #1, #6 uses #5, #15 uses #14 — which keeps the quest coherent and gives students a reason to check their work

What this is — and what it isn't

This is practice, not instruction. There's no lesson, no worked example at the top of the page, no explanation of where the equations come from. It assumes a student has already met these three formulas somewhere else and now needs a reason to use them twenty-three times without losing interest. If you're looking for something to teach kinematics from scratch, this isn't it. If you've taught it and need practice your students will actually finish, it is.

Who it's for

The clearest fit is a first-year physics or physical science course, grades 8–10 — the opening kinematics unit, or a review before a test. It also works well for homeschool families