Watch the rubber bands vibrate on homemade guitars in this video segment adapted from ZOOM as cast members talk about pitch and demonstrate how to make a cereal box instrument.
This video segment, adapted from ZOOM, explores the different sounds that a simple drinking straw can produce when you cut the straw and blow into it.
This video segment, adapted from ZOOM, demonstrates how to use a drinking straw and a bottle full of water to make low- and high-pitched sounds.
To further their understanding of sound energy, students identify the different pitches and frequencies created by a vibrating ruler and a straw kazoo. They create high- and low-pitch sound waves.
In this lesson, students will create and launch planets in Visceral Science to explore where planets come from, and what keeps them in orbit!
Estimated time required: 1-2 class periods.
Technology required for this lesson: Augmented Reality.
In Visceral Science, students are able to create planets and place them in orbit around stars. In this lesson, students will be able to explore how planetary orbits work and the role that gravity plays by exploring with gravity wells.
Estimated time required: 1-2 class periods.
Technology required for this lesson: .
This video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey uses animation and archival footage to provide an overview of the theory of plate tectonics.
This video segment adapted from NOVA uses animation to show the relationship between the movement of a tectonic plate and whether volcanoes on the Hawaiian Islands are active or dormant.
In this lesson, students learn about echolocation: what it is and how engineers use it to "see" things in the dark, or deep underwater. Also, they learn how animals use echolocation to catch their dinner and travel the ocean waters and skies without running into things.
Students design and build paper rockets around film canisters, which serve as engines. An antacid tablet and water are put into each canister, reacting to form carbon dioxide gas, and acting as the pop rocket's propellant. With the lid snapped on, the continuous creation of gas causes pressure to build up until the lid pops off, sending the rocket into the air. The pop rockets demonstrate Newton's third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In this hands-on science lesson, the students will observe (and eat!) cooked popcorn and uncooked popcorn. The students will understand why popcorn pops. The students will weigh cooked and uncooked popcorn to understand why cooked popcorn weighs more.
SSAC Physical Volcanology module. Students build a spreadsheet for an iterative calculation to find volume of bubbles and hence porosity, permeability and gas escape as a function of depth.
Working in teams, students learn the basics of fluid power design using the PFPD as their investigative platform. They investigate the similarities and differences between using pneumatic and hydraulic power in the PFPD. With the main components of the PFPD already assembled, student groups determine the correct way to connect the valves to the actuators using colored, plastic tubing. Once connected, they compete in timed challenges to test their abilities to separate material out of containers using the PFPDs. NOTE: No special pre-requisite knowledge is required for students to be successful in this activity.
Students investigate the accuracy of sundials and the discrepancy that lies between "real time" and "clock time." They track the position of the sun during the course of a relatively short period of time as they make a shadow plot, a horizontal sundial, and a diptych sundial. (The activity may be abridged to include only one or two of the different sundials, instead of all three.)
How might you use an object’s gravitational potential energy to move an object? This challenge will explore how differently shaped objects store potential energy and are affected by gravity. We can see the energy of motion around us every day. From how we run to school or work to driving in our cars, the energy of motion can be seen (and experienced) everywhere. Exploring the energy of motion is one of the easiest ways to understand how energy transfers since we can see it so concretely! Analyzing energy use can help us recognize how we might design and develop sustainable energy systems in the future.
This is a 120-minute lesson that includes a self-paced interactive module and classroom activities. The teacher guide includes a challenge sequence (timeline), relevance to standards, materials list, assessment, evaluation rubric, and learning extensions.
Lesson objectives: (1) Students recognize that mechanical energy includes: Kinetic energy (KE)- the energy of motion, and Potential energy (PE)- the energy of position. (2) Students recognize that stored energy is potential while moving energy is kinetic.
Students learn about the mechanical advantage offered by pulleys in an interactive and game-like manner. By virtue of the activity's mechatronic presentation, they learn to study a mechanical system not as a static image, but rather as a dynamic system that is under their control. Using a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robotics platform and common hardware items, students build a mechanized elevator system. The ability to control different parameters (such as motor power, testing load and pulley arrangement) enables the teacher, as well as the students, to emphasize and reinforce particular aspects/effects of mechanical advantage.
Students use balloons (a polymer) to explore preconditioning a viscoelastic material behavior that is important to understand when designing biomedical devices. They improve their understanding of preconditioning by measuring the force needed to stretch a balloon to the same displacement multiple times. Students gain experience in data collection and graph interpretation.
Acting as civil engineers hired by the U.S. Department of Transportation to research how to best use piezoelectric materials to detect road damage, student groups are challenged to independently create their own experiment procedures, working with given materials and tools. The general approach is that they set up model roads using rubber mats to simulate asphalt and piezoelectric transducers to simulate the in-ground road sensors. They drop heavy bolts at various locations on the “road,” collecting data and then analyzing the voltage changes across the piezoelectric transducers caused by the vibrations of the bolt hitting the rubber. After making notches in the rubber “road” to simulate cracks and potholes, they collect more data to see if the piezo elements detect the damage. Students write up their research and conclusions as if presenting evidence to USDOT officials about how the voltage changes across the piezo elements can be used to indicate road damage and extrapolated to determine when roads need maintenance service.
Students gesture the orientations of cross-bedded sandstones, and in particular the relationship between a single cross bed and the bed sets. They do this for photos of undeformed and deformed cross-bedding.
A visual of how Fermi is using the MAGIS-100 to search for dark matter