Students will encounter puzzling unbalanced and non-contact force phenomena, generate authentic investigable questions, and refine one focused research question with a testable hypothesis that will guide their week-long force investigation and physics poster work.

Students will design a systematic, evidence-based plan to investigate their self-developed question about unbalanced or non-contact forces. They will align their methodology to their question type, identify variables and controls, plan for high-quality data collection, and revise their design through structured peer feedback before beginning data collection.

Students will systematically collect and document high-quality data for their unbalanced or non-contact force investigations, recording conditions, measurements, and anomalies so their evidence base is strong enough for meaningful analysis in the next phase.

Students will transform their collected force and motion data into meaningful visualizations, identify patterns and anomalies, and interpret whether their evidence supports, contradicts, or complicates their original hypothesis about unbalanced or non-contact forces.

Students will synthesize their investigation findings by writing evidence-based conclusions, explicitly acknowledging limitations, generating new research questions, and presenting their full investigation to an authentic audience during a Physics Olympics-style showcase.