Further your STEM efforts with the Science of Golf video series from the partnership of NBC Learn, the United States Golf Association (USGA), Chevron, and NSTA. As the governing body for the sport, one aspect of the USGA’s role is to regulate and test all golf equipment for conformance to the Rules of Golf. In this installment, Science of Golf: Volume, Displacement & Buoyancy, students get a glimpse of how science practices transfer over to the working world of sports.

Try out the NSTA-developed lesson plan that provides you with ideas and guidance on how students might investigate associated questions. Worried about getting clubs for students to use as lab equipment? Look no further than a garage sale or your local used sporting goods resale shop. Used clubs and balls can be had for very low cost. Or check in with a nearby golf course. People leave behind clubs and balls on the course all the time and they might just have some unclaimed ones to give you. And, your students will likely have ideas of their own about how to build them!

Find the series—available cost-free—on www.NBCLearn.com. Check back often over the coming weeks as NSTA highlights each video in the series in this blog. We look forward to hearing from you about how you expect to use the videos as well as how the lesson plan works out in practice with your students. Once you try it out, please leave comments below each posting!

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Image of driver at the tee courtesy of Cliff Muller.

Video

SOG: Volume, Displacement & Buoyancy describes Archimedes’ principle and how it is applied to the problem of finding the volume of irregularly shaped club heads via the buoyancy force on them when submerged in water.

STEM Lesson Plan—Adaptable for Grades 7–12

The lesson plan—adaptable for grades 7 to 12—provides ideas for STEM exploration plus strategies to support students in their own quest for answers and as well as a more focused approach that helps all students participate in hands-on inquiry.

The SOG: Volume, Displacement & Buoyancy lesson plan guides students in the design an apparatus that determines the volume of a golf club or other irregularly-shaped object.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans: [contact-form 2 “ChemNow]