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.

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).

Investigate the effect of gravity on objects of various mass during free fall. Predict what the position-time and velocity-time graphs will look like. Compare graphs for light and heavy objects. Was Galileo Right is the last of five SmartGraphs activities designed for a typical physical science unit of study on the motion of objects.

Windmills have been used for hundreds of years to collect energy from the wind in order to pump water, grind grain, and more recently generate electricity. There are many possible designs for the blades of a wind generator and engineers are always trying new ones. Design and test your own wind generator, then try to improve it by running a small electric motor connected to a voltage sensor.