Through five lessons, students are introduced to all facets of the rock cycle. Topics include rock and mineral types, material stresses and weathering, geologic time and fossil formation, the Earth's crust and tectonic plates, and soil formation and composition. Lessons are presented in the context of the related impact on humans in the form of roadway and tunnel design and construction, natural disasters, environmental site assessment for building structures, and measurement instrumentation and tools. Hands-on activities include experiencing tensional, compressional and shear material stress by using only hand force to break bars of soap; preparing Jeopardy-type trivia questions/answers for a class game that reinforces students' understanding of rocks and the rock cycle; creating "fossils" using melted chocolate; working within design constraints to design and build a model tunnel through a clay mountain; and soil sampling by creating tools, obtaining soil cores, documenting a soil profile log, and analyzing the findings to make engineering predictions.

Students learn how and why engineers design satellites to benefit life on Earth, as well as explore motion, rockets and rocket motion. Through six lessons and 10 associated hands-on activities, students discover that the motion of all objects everything from the flight of a rocket to the movement of a canoe is governed by Newton's three laws of motion. This unit introduces students to the challenges of getting into space for the purpose of exploration. The ideas of thrust, weight and control are explored, helping students to fully understand what goes into the design of rockets and the value of understanding these scientific concepts. After learning how and why the experts make specific engineering choices, students also learn about the iterative engineering design process as they design and construct their own model rockets. Then students explore triangulation, a concept that is fundamental to the navigation of satellites and global positioning systems designed by engineers; by investigating these technologies, they learn how people can determine their positions and the locations of others.

Learn the basics for managing your Ohio school library. This INFOhio Learning Pathway is for new Ohio school librarians or Ohio school library staff who have not completed a graduate program in library science. Choose to complete individual classes in this INFOhio Learning Pathway or complete the full School Library Basics Learning Pathway to earn up to 11 contact hours.

This unit describes a general approach to guiding students to complete service-based engineering design projects, with specific examples provided in detail as associated activities. With your class, brainstorm ideas for engineering designs that benefit your community or a specific person in your community. Then, guided by the steps of the engineering design process, have students research to understand background science and math, meet their client to understand the problem, and create, test and improve prototype devices. Note that service-based projects often take more time to prepare, especially if you arrange for a real client. However, the authors notice that students of both genders and all ethnicities tend to respond with more enthusiasm and interest to altruistic projects.

Through a five-lesson series with five activities, students are introduced to six simple machines inclined plane, wedge, screw, lever, pulley, wheel-and-axle as well as compound machines, which are combinations of two or more simple machines. Once students understand about work (work = force x distance), they become familiar with the machines' mechanical advantages, and see how they make work easier. Through an introduction to compound machines, students begin to think critically about machine inventions and their pervasive roles in our lives. After learning about Rube Goldberg contraptions absurd inventions that complete simple tasks in complicated ways they evaluate the importance and usefulness of the many machines around them. Through the hands-on activities, students draw designs for contraptions that could move a circus elephant into a rail car, create a construction site ramp design by measuring different inclined planes and calculating the ideal vs. actual mechanical advantage of each, compare the theoretical and actual mechanical advantages of different pulley systems conceived to save a whale, build and test grape catapults made with popsicle sticks and rubber bands, and follow the steps of the engineering design process to design and build Rube Goldberg machines.

This course gives students some experience in dealing with the challenges that are unique to web applications, such as concurrency and security risks.

An introduction to our solar system the planets, our Sun and Moon. To begin, students learn about the history and engineering of space travel. They make simple rockets to acquire a basic understanding Newton's third law of motion. They explore energy transfer concepts and use renewable solar energy for cooking. They see how engineers design tools, equipment and spacecraft to go where it is too far and too dangerous for humans. They explore the Earth's water cycle, and gravity as applied to orbiting bodies. They learn the steps of the design process as they create their own models of planetary rovers made of edible parts. Students conduct experiments to examine soil for signs of life, and explore orbit transfers. While studying about the International Space Station, they investigate the realities of living in space. Activities explore low gravity on human muscles, eating in microgravity, and satellite tracking. Finally, students learn about the context of our solar system the universe as they learn about the Hubble Space Telescope, celestial navigation and spectroscopy.

Students are provided with an understanding of sound and light waves through a "sunken treasure" theme a continuous storyline throughout the lessons. In the first five lessons, students learn about sound, and in the rest of the lessons, they explore light concepts. To begin, students are introduced to the concepts of longitudinal and transverse waves. Then they learn about wavelength and amplitude in transverse waves. In the third lesson, students learn about sound through the introduction of frequency and how it applies to musical sounds. Next, they learn all about echolocation what it is and how engineers use it to "see" things in the dark or deep underwater. The last of the five sound lessons introduces acoustics; students learn how different materials reflect and absorb sound.

Students learn how using spectrographs helps people understand the composition of light sources. Using simple materials including holographic diffraction gratings, students create and customize their own spectrographs just like engineers. They gather data about different light sources, make comparisons between sources and theorize about their compositions. Before building spectrographs, students learn and apply several methods to identify and interpret patterns, specifically different ways of displaying visual spectra. They also use spectral data from the Cassini mission to Saturn and its moon, Titan, to determine the chemical composition of the planet's rings and its moon's atmosphere.

Students learn how to solve problems without doing a proof or exact calculation. Topics include dimensional analysis, successive approximation, generalization, and pictorial analysis. A syllabus, readings, assignments, and related resources are included.

A college course featuring mineral image galleries, labs, and instructor's notes on the topics of crystalline structure, crystal chemistry, and bonding in rock-forming minerals.

Through two lessons and their associated activities, students do the work of scientists by designing their own experiments to answer questions they generate. Through a simple activity involving surface tension, students learn what a hypothesis is—and isn't—and why generating a hypothesis is an important aspect of the scientific method. In the second activity, with bubble gum to capture their interest, students learn to design and conduct controlled experiments to answer their own questions about the amounts of sugar (or artificial sweetener) in bubble or chewing gum.

The resources provided by this course outline focus on the processes involved in the shaping of Earth's surface.

Surface tension accounts for many of the interesting properties we associate with water. By learning about surface tension and adhesive forces, students learn why liquid jets of water break into droplets rather than staying in a continuous stream. Through hands-on activities, students learn how the combination of adhesive forces and cohesive forces cause capillary motion. They study different effects of capillary motion and use capillary motion to measure surface tension. Students explore the phenomena of wetting and hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces and see how water's behavior changes when a surface is treated with different coatings. A lotus leaf is a natural example of a superhydrophobic surface, with its water-repellent, self-cleaning characteristics. Students examine the lotus effect on natural leaves and human-made superhydrophobic surfaces, and explore how the lotus leaf repels dewy water through vibration. See the Unit Overview section for details on each lesson in this unit.

This unit focuses on teaching students about the many aspects of biomedical engineering (BME). Students come to see that BME is a broad field that relies on concepts from many engineering disciplines. They also begin to understand some of the special considerations that must be made when dealing with the human body. Activities and class discussions encourage students to think as engineers to come up with their own solutions to some of medical challenges that have been solved throughout the history of BME. Class time iincludes brainstorming and presenting ideas to the class for discussion. Specific activities include examination of the material properties and functions of surgical instruments and prosthetics, a simulation of the training experience of a surgical resident, and an investigation of the properties of fluid flow in vascular tissue.

Through four lessons and three hands-on activities, students learn the concepts of refraction and interference in order to solve an engineering challenge: "In 2013, actress Angelina Jolie underwent a double mastectomy, not because she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but merely to lower her cancer risk. But what if she never inherited the gene(s) that are linked to breast cancer and endured surgery unnecessarily? Can we create a new method of assessing people's genetic risks of breast cancer that is both efficient and cost-effective?" While pursuing a solution to this challenge, students learn about some high-tech materials and delve into the properties of light, including the equations of refraction (index of refraction, Snell's law). Students ultimately propose a method to detect cancer-causing genes by applying the refraction of light in a porous film in the form of an optical biosensor. Investigating this challenge question through this unit is designed for an honors or AP level physics class, although it could be modified for conceptual physics.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.Senior Contributing AuthorsP. Scott Corbett, Ventura CollegeVolker Janssen, California State University, FullertonJohn M. Lund, Keene State CollegeTodd Pfannestiel, Clarion UniversityPaul Vickery, Oral Roberts UniversitySylvie Waskiewicz

The airplanes unit begins with a lesson on how airplanes create lift, which involves a discussion of air pressure and how wings use Bernoulli's principle to change air pressure. Next, students explore the other three forces acting on airplanes thrust, weight and drag. Following these lessons, students learn how airplanes are controlled and use paper airplanes to demonstrate these principles. The final lessons addresses societal and technological impacts that airplanes have had on our world. Students learn about different kinds of airplanes and then design and build their own balsa wood airplanes based on what they have learned.

Engineers design and implement many creative techniques for managing stormwater at its sources in order to improve and restore the hydrology and water quality of developed sites to pre-development conditions. Through the two lessons in this unit, students are introduced to green infrastructure (GI) and low-impact development (LID) technologies, including green roofs and vegetative walls, bioretention or rain gardens, bioswales, planter boxes, permeable pavement, urban tree canopies, rainwater harvesting, downspout disconnection, green streets and alleys, and green parking. Student teams take on the role of stormwater engineers through five associated activities. They first model the water cycle, and then measure transpiration rates and compare native plant species. They investigate the differences in infiltration rates and storage capacities between several types of planting media before designing their own media mixes to meet design criteria. Then they design and test their own pervious pavement mix combinations. In the culminating activity, teams bring together all the concepts as well as many of the materials from the previous activities in order to create and install personal rain gardens. The unit prepares the students and teachers to take on the design and installation of bigger rain garden projects to manage stormwater at their school campuses, homes and communities.

This unit on nanoparticles engages students with a hypothetical Grand Challenge Question that asks about the skin cancer risk for someone living in Australia, given the local UV index and the condition of the region's ozone layer. The question asks how nanoparticles might be used to help detect, treat and protect people from skin cancer. Through three lessons, students learn about the science of electromagnetic radiation and energy waves, human skin and its response to ultraviolet radiation, and the state of medical nanotechnology related to skin cancer. Through three hands-on activities, students perform flame tests to become familiar with the transfer of energy in quantum form, design and conduct their own quality-control experiments to test sun protection factors (SPFs), and write nanotechnology grant proposals.