Students learn about the weighted mean by building spreadsheets that apply this concept to the average density of the oceanic lithosphere.
Students learn about the weighted mean by building spreadsheets that apply this concept to the average density of the oceanic lithosphere.
This video segment of Swift: Eyes through Time provides concrete examples to explain the concept that distance in space equals distance in time.
At this site from The Nobel Foundation you can download and read Lord Rayleigh's Nobel Lecture, "The density of gases in the air and the discovery o argon" (in pdf format).
A magical demonstration where a Pyrex tube vanishes in a beaker of mineral oil. Useful demonstration to introduce to concept of refraction (and/or partial reflection).
This activity is a magnet science center. Young students learn about magnets through safe, hands on experiences.
Students visualize the magnetic field of a strong permanent magnet using a compass. The lesson begins with an analogy to the effect of the Earth's magnetic field on a compass. Students see the connection that the compass simply responds to the Earth's magnetic field since it is the closest, strongest field, and thus the compass responds to the field of the permanent magnets, allowing them the ability to map the field of that magnet in the activity. This information will be important in designing a solution to the grand challenge in activity 4 of the unit.
Students begin working on the grand challenge of the unit by thinking about the nature of metals and quick, cost-effective means of separating different metals, especially steel. They arrive at the idea, with the help of input from relevant sources, to use magnets, but first they must determine if the magnets can indeed isolate only the steel.
After the unit on Electricity and Magnetism, students are given the opportunity to experience practical applications of the concept as they construct their own headphones and listen to music from their I-pods.
This activity is a discovery lab where students will discover what does and does not stick to a magnet.
This cooperative classroom activity will allow students to apply their knowledge of magnetism and electricity. The students will create a circuit that lights a flashlight bulb and simultaneously practice the skills of prediction, observation, inferrence, recording, investigation and communication.
This activity is an introduction to a magnifying glass as a science tool.
This video from KET traces the energy transformations that occur when coal is burned to produce electricity. Some of the mechanical processes are also described.
In this activity the temperature of a reaction is monitored for different concentrations of reactants.
This is a lab designed to allow students to create and collect gas through a simple acid-metal reaction.
In this adapted ZOOM video segment, cast members get hands-on in the recycling process by using old newspapers to make new paper.
Repeated motion is present everywhere in nature. Learn how to 'make waves' with your own movements using a motion detector to plot your position as a function of time, and try to duplicate wave patterns presented in the activity. Investigate the concept of distance versus time graphs and see how your own movement can be represented on a graph.
In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members make a seismometer and experiment with different ways to make it register movement.
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum Module. Students build spreadsheets to estimate discharge for a culvert using the Manning equation, and to estimate culvert size, given a specified discharge.
This video adapted from NASA explains how a magnetometer determines magnetic fields around planets.