This interactive activity from the NOVA Web site challenges you to think like Einstein and understand how time travel might be possible.

The activity presents a Think-Pair-Share analysis of a metal detector including a simulation.

This is a classroom lab investigation where students use the story of the three bears to discover inadequacies in the story and discover how to make them correct. Convection, conduction and radiation are involved.

This video from NASA explains the process by which gamma-ray flashes associated with storms produce matter/antimatter particle pairs.

This activity is a summary/assessment assignment which allows for differentiation and student choice. Students are assessed in their knowledge of the atomic model and the arrangement of elements on the periodic table.

This illustrated essay from the NOVA Web site answers questions about irregularities in the tides.

This project is a classroom investigation where students design a chemical torpedo out of pipettes, baking soda and vinegar to travel down a rain gutter. While working on the project the students will have to analyze their design, interpret their success and failures, adapt their creation and compete against other students in distance and velocities of their launched torpedo.

Students learn about traffic lights and their importance in maintaining public safety and order. Using a Parallax® Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, students work in teams on the engineering challenge to build a traffic light with a specific behavior. In the process, they learn about light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and how their use can save energy. Students also design their own requirements based on real-world observations as they learn about traffic safety and work towards an interesting goal within the realm of what is important in practice. Knowledge gained from the activity is directly transferrable to future activities, and skills learned are scalable to more ambitious class projects.

This lab introduces or reinforces the concept of specific heat and the transfer of heat amongst substances.

The activity presents an interactive lecture demonstration of the operation of a transformer using a simulation.

In this video segment adapted from NASA, learn how engineers are transforming the future of flight by designing airplanes based on principles found in nature. In the early 1900s, the Wright Brothers found inspiration for their first airplane in nature. Their "Flyer," which was modeled on a bird's flexible wing design, was steered and stabilized by pulleys and cables that twisted the wingtips. Despite its success, this control strategy quickly vanished from aviation. Instead, stiff wings capable of withstanding the greater forces associated with increased aircraft weights and flying speeds became the standard. In this video segment adapted from NASA, learn how designs found in nature have inspired today's aerospace engineers as they conceive the next-generation of flying machines. Grades 3-12.

Transistors are the building blocks of modern electronic devices. Your cell phones, iPods, and computers all depend on them to operate. Thanks to today's microfabrication technology, transistors can be made very tiny and be massively produced. You are probably using billions of them while working with this activity now--as of 2006, a dual-core Intel microprocessor contains 1.7 billion transistors. The field effect transistor is the most common type of transistor. So we will focus on it in this activity.

Students work as engineers to design and test trebuchets (in this case LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots) that can launch objects. During the testing stage, they change one variable at a time to study its effect on the outcome of their designs. Specifically, they determine how far objects travel depending on their weights. As students learn about the different components of robot design and the specific function controls, they determine what design features are important for launching objects.

All cells, organs and tissues of a living organism are built of molecules. Some of them are small, made from only a few atoms. There is, however, a special class of molecules that make up and play critical roles in living cells. These molecules can consist of many thousands to millions of atoms. They are referred to as macromolecules (or large biomolecules).

Watch the ZOOM cast build a chair out of newspaper by making good use of the strength of triangles.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, the cast tries to design and build a bridge made out of drinking straws that will support the weight of 200 pennies.

This activity is a classroom activity where students predict and test Newton's First Law of Motion as it applied to the movement of cargo in the bed of a truck.

Students work within constraints to construct model trusses and then test them to failure as a way to evaluate the relative strength of different truss configurations and construction styles. Each student group uses Popsicle sticks and hot glue to build a different truss configuration from a provided diagram of truss styles. Within each group, each student builds two exact copies of the team's truss configuration using his/her own construction method, one of which is tested under shear conditions and the other tested under compression conditions. Results are compiled and reviewed as a class to analyze the strength of different types of shapes and construction methods under the two types of loads. Students make and review predictions, and normalize strengths. Teams give brief presentations to recap their decisions, results and analysis.

This interactive activity, from the Building Big Web site, explores tunneling and the tools and methods used to do the job.