You’re the goalie. You’re padded down in an extra 10 kg of gear. You know the puck is “over there” somewhere. Then you catch it with your eye, screaming at you from the blue line. But before you really see it, your arm is already moving your glove into position. SMACK!!! The frozen hunk of rubber hits your glove. SAVE!!!

While reaction time is critical in many sports, defending the goal from a puck speeding toward you at 120 kph or more requires especially quick reflexes. NHL goalies have lots of equipment designed to help stop pucks, but their most valuable tool is their brain. Use this lesson package, developed by NBC Learn in partnership with NSTA and NSF to heighten students’ understanding of reflexes as they explore their own.

Remember, after you view the video and use the lessons, we’d love to hear from you about how they worked.

—Judy Elgin Jensen

Photo of goalie in action by Les Stockton 

Video: “Reflexes & Reaction Time” explains what sparks the nerve impulses that travel to the limbs, allowing the goalie to see and react quickly enough to make a save.

Middle school lesson: In this lesson, students explore reflexes and other stimulus-response reactions and design and investigate reflex reaction time.

High school lesson: In this lesson, students investigate reaction time and hypothesize how distractions impact their results.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans:

[contact-form 2 “ChemNow]