Students are briefly introduced to Maxwell's equations and their significance to phenomena associated with electricity and magnetism. Basic concepts such as current, electricity and field lines are covered and reinforced. Through multiple topics and activities, students see how electricity and magnetism are interrelated.

In this unit, students explore the various roles of environmental engineers, including: environmental cleanup, water quality, groundwater resources, surface water and groundwater flow, water contamination, waste disposal and air pollution. Specifically, students learn about the factors that affect water quality and the conditions that enable different animals and plants to survive in their environments. Next, students learn about groundwater and how environmental engineers study groundwater to predict the distribution of surface pollution. Students also learn how water flows through the ground, what an aquifer is and what soil properties are used to predict groundwater flow. Additionally, students discover that the water they drink everyday comes from many different sources, including surface water and groundwater. They investigate possible scenarios of drinking water contamination and how contaminants can negatively affect the organisms that come in contact with them. Students learn about the three most common methods of waste disposal and how environmental engineers continue to develop technologies to dispose of trash. Lastly, students learn what causes air pollution and how to investigate the different pollutants that exist, such as toxic gases and particulate matter. Also, they investigate the technologies developed by engineers to reduce air pollution.

Students are introduced to the fundamentals of environmental engineering as well as the global air, land and water quality concerns facing today's environmental engineers. After a lesson and activity to introduce environmental engineering, students learn more about water chemistry aspects of environmental engineering. Specifically, they focus on groundwater contamination and remediation, including sources of contamination, adverse health effects of contaminated drinking water, and current and new remediation techniques. Several lab activities provide hands-on experiences with topics relevant to environmental engineering concerns and technologies, including removal efficiencies of activated carbon in water filtration, measuring pH, chromatography as a physical separation method, density and miscibility.

This article aligns the concepts of Essential Principle 2 of the Climate Sciences to the K-5 content standards of the National Science Education Standards. The author also identifies common misconceptions about heat and the greenhouse gases effect and offers resources for assessing students' understanding of interactions among components of the Earth system. This article continues the examination of the climate sciences and climate literacy on which the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle is structured.

This article identifies age-appropriate national science education content standards and curriculum connections for introducing complex concepts contained in Principle 7 of the Essential Principles of Climate Sciences. The principle describes consequences of climate changes on Earth systems and human lives. The content standards will help teachers determine appropriate topics for their students. A number of resources from the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle are highlighted for their connection to the science curriculum in the early grades. In addition, the article identifies common misconceptions about weather and the water cycle often held by students.

Students explore material properties in hands-on and visually evident ways via the Archimedes' principle. First, they design and conduct an experiment to calculate densities of various materials and present their findings to the class. Using this information, they identify an unknown material based on its density. Then, groups explore buoyant forces. They measure displacement needed for various materials to float on water and construct the equation for buoyancy. Using this equation, they calculate the numerical solution for a boat hull using given design parameters.

Students observe multiple examples of capillary action. First they observe the shape of a glass-water meniscus and explain its shape in terms of the adhesive attraction of the water to the glass. Then they study capillary tubes and observe water climbing due to capillary action in the glass tubes. Finally, students experience a real-world application of capillary action by designing and using "capillary siphons" to filter water.

Students test and observe the "self-cleaning" lotus effect using a lotus leaf and cloth treated with a synthetic lotus-like superhydrophobic coating. They also observe the Wenzel and Cassie Baxter wetting states by creating and manipulating condensation droplets on the leaf surface. They consider the real-life engineering applications for these amazing water-repellent and self-cleaning properties.

Students drop water from different heights to demonstrate the conversion of water's potential energy to kinetic energy. They see how varying the height from which water is dropped affects the splash size. They follow good experiment protocol, take measurements, calculate averages and graph results. In seeing how falling water can be used to do work, they also learn how this energy transformation figures into the engineering design and construction of hydroelectric power plants, dams and reservoirs.

Students conduct experiments to determine the flow rate of faucets by timing how long it takes to fill gallon jugs. They do this for three different faucet flow levels (quarter blast, half blast, full blast), averaging three trials for each level. They convert their results from gallons per second (gps) to cubic feet per second (cfs).

Students further their understanding of the salmon life cycle and the human structures and actions that aid in the migration of fish around hydroelectric dams by playing an animated PowerPoint game involving a fish that must climb a fish ladder to get over a dam. They first brainstorm their own ideas, and then learn about existing ways engineers have made dams "friendlier" to migrating fish, before being quizzed as part of the game.

Students experience firsthand one of the most common water treatment types in the industry today, flocculants. They learn how the amount of suspended solids in water is measured using the basic properties of matter and light. In addition, they learn about the types of solids that can be found in water and the reasons that some are easier to remove than others. Encompassing the concepts of force and motion, attraction and repulsion of charged particles, and properties of matter, during the associated activity students see scientific concepts they already understand through the eyes of engineers who apply them to the removal of solids from water via chemical flocculants.

Students learn how to use and graph real-world stream gage data to create event and annual hydrographs and calculate flood frequency statistics. Using an Excel spreadsheet of real-world event, annual and peak streamflow data, they manipulate the data (converting units, sorting, ranking, plotting), solve problems using equations, and calculate return periods and probabilities. Prompted by worksheet questions, they analyze the runoff data as engineers would. Students learn how hydrographs help engineers make decisions and recommendations to community stakeholders concerning water resources and flooding.

Students explore the impact of changing river volumes and different floodplain terrain in experimental trials with table top-sized riverbed models. The models are made using modeling clay in aluminum baking pans placed on a slight incline. Water added "upstream" at different flow rates and to different riverbed configurations simulates different potential flood conditions. Students study flood dynamics as they modify the riverbed with blockages or levees to simulate real-world scenarios.

In the Flow Rate Experiment, students perform hands-on experiments with a common faucet, as well as work with the Engineering Our Water Living Lab to gain a better understanding of flow rate and how it pertains to engineering and applied science. Students calculate the flow rate of a faucet for three different levels (quarter blast, half blast, and full blast). Building on these calculations, students hypothesize about the flow rate in a nearby river, and then use the Engineering Our Water Living Lab to check their hypothesis. For this lesson to be effective, your students need to have a visual feel for the flow in a nearby river.

This article provides science content knowledge about forces that shape the Earth's surface: erosion by wind, water, and ice, volcanoes, earthquakes, and plate tectonics and how these forces affect Earth's polar regions.

Freezing temperature, the temperature at which a substance turns from liquid to solid, and melting temperature, the temperature at which a substance turns from a solid to a liquid, are characteristic physical properties. In this experiment, the cooling and warming behavior of a familiar substance, water, will be investigated. By examining graphs of the data, the freezing and melting temperatures of water will be determined and compared.

Between 70 and 75% of the Earth's surface is covered with water and there exists still more water in the atmosphere and underground in aquifers. In this lesson, students learn about water bodies on the planet Earth and their various uses and qualities. They will learn about several ways that engineers are working to maintain and conserve water sources. They will also think about their role in water conservation.

In this activity, students will use a tutorial on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's website to learn about how surface water is treated to make it safe to drink.

This activity is an easy way to demonstrate the fundamental properties of polar and non-polar molecules (such as water and oil), how they interact, and the affect surfactants (such as soap) have on their interactions. Students see the behavior of oil and water when placed together, and the importance soap (a surfactant) plays in the mixing of oil and water which is why soap is used every day to clean greasy objects, such as hands and dishes. This activity is recommended for all levels of student, grades 3-12, as it can easily be scaled to meet any desired level of difficulty.