HS-PS2-3 | Design For Collision Safety

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Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision.

Clarification statement: Examples of evaluation and refinement could include determining the success of the device at protecting an object from damage and modifying the design to improve it. Examples of a device could include a football helmet or a parachute.

Assessment boundary: Assessment is limited to qualitative evaluations and/or algebraic manipulations.

Assessment

What assessment of HS-PS2-3 might look like on a NY state exam.

Exam	Cluster	Question
June 2026	Motorcycle Helmets	Question 17
	Motorcycle Helmets	Question 20
Sample clusters (Spring 2025)	World Record Jumps	Question 5

Performance Level Descriptions

PLDs communicate the knowledge and skills expected of students to demonstrate proficiency in each Learning Standard. NYS assessments classify student performance into one of five levels.

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Level 1: Identify a device from those provided that reduces the force on a macroscopic object during an interaction, or identify an explanation from those provided for how a given device reduces the force on a macroscopic object.

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Level 2: Use an algebraic representation to describe how a given device affects the force, time, change in momentum, and/or change in velocity of a macroscopic object during an interaction.

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Level 3: Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design a device that reduces the force on a macroscopic object during a collision and explain how this device reduces the force, or given the design of a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object, apply scientific and engineering ideas to describe how this device can be refined to reduce this force, or given data for a mechanism designed to minimize the force on a macroscopic object, evaluate the effectiveness of the mechanism based upon given constraints.

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Level 4: Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision.

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Level 5: Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design and build a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision and analyze the forces acting on the object during the collision, and use this analysis to refine the divide to further minimize the force of impact during the collision.

Resources

Examples and discussion of resources for the learning, teaching, and assessment of HS-PS2-3.

This section could be expanded upon. You can help out by adding to this section.

NGSS Dimensions

Performance expectation HS-PS2-3 was developed using the following elements from the NRC document A Framework for K-12 Science Education:

Science and Engineering Practices

• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
  • Apply scientific ideas to solve a design problem, taking into account possible unanticipated effects.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• PS2.A: Forces and Motion
  • If a system interacts with objects outside itself, the total momentum of the system can change; however, any such change is balanced by changes in the momentum of objects outside the system.
• ETS1.C: Optimizing the Design Solution
  • Criteria may need to be broken down into simpler ones that can be approached systematically, and decisions about the priority of certain criteria over others (trade-offs) may be needed.

Crosscutting Concepts

• Cause and Effect
  • Systems can designed to cause a desired effect.

Page contributors: Caroline Leonard, Conrad Richman

Physics | HS. Forces and Interactions