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Hurricanes
Students perform various experiments to explore hurricanes. In this earth science lesson, students explain how they form. They identify the structure of a hurricane.
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Plant Transpiration
Students conduct various experiments to investigate plant transpiration. In this biology lesson, students explain how this process helps maintain the hydrologic cycle. They measure the rate of water loss in plants using a potometer.
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How Pollution Disrupts Our Natural Environment
Students conduct experiments to illustrate global warming. For this air pollution lesson, students first examine how a layer of greenhouse gasses might impact the earth's atmospheric temperature, then evaluate how the layer of gasses...
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Osmosis
Fifth graders explore osmosis as they watch organisms divide. In this organism lesson, 5th graders use potatoes to experiment with the effects of salty water in the body. Students discuss what osmosis is and record what...
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Designing Windmills
Students study mechanical engineering and how it plays a part in the creation of windmills. They design and test their own windmills using various materials and sail designs.
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Clouds
Students explore clouds. In this weather lesson, students identify the steps in the water cycle, define condensation and evaporation, and relate this information to cloud formation. Students perform a cloud experiment,...
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The Amazing Apple
Learners analyze an apple. In this lesson about developing inquiry skills, students do an experiment with an apple. Learners make several observations about the apple. Students answer questions to help them improve and practice their...
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Melting and Freezing
Learners explore how various substances change from a solid to a liquid or from a liquid to a solid and how temperature, pressure and nature play an important role in this process. In this melting and freezing lesson,...
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Cooking with the Sun!
Learners access prior knowledge of solar energy and understand that solar energy produces heat. In this solar cooker activity, students complete grade appropriate experiments using the heat of the sun. Learners complete a worksheet on...
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Eruption
Students conduct an experiment simulating an underwater volcano based on reading The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top. They create a desktop volcano eruption demonstrating where magma comes from and how lava flows.
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Storm That Drowned a City
Young scholars use a map to locate New Orleans and watch a video on the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. As a class, they watch a demonstration on how a wetland can reduce the impact of a hurricane. In groups, they perform their own...
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Water and Ice
Learners perform experiments in pairs to visualize the changes in water during freezing and melting. In this properties of water instructional activity, students use their senses and inquiry tools to understand the changes in state of...
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What Makes a Kite Fly?
Ninth graders compare the nature of forces of gravity, lift, thrust, and drag. They select proper materials for making a kite and attach a proper tail. Students interpret and summarize the observations made during the flight of the kites.
Chymist
Determination of the Volume of CO2 in Pop Rocks
Where does the pop in pop rocks come from? An engaging activity asks scholars to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in a package of Pop Rocks candy. Learners dissolve the candy in water and use the solubility of CO2 to determine its mass.
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How Things Fly
Students explain basic principles of aeronautics such as gravity and lift. In this How Things Fly activity, students visit the interactive, hands-on How Things Fly gallery at the Smithsonian. Students perform three experiments that...
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Investigating Motion
Students explore types of motion. In this motion experiment, students observe how objects move. Students work in small groups to discover the laws of motion.
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Gas Laws and Alka-Seltzer Rockets
Students investigate the Ideal Gas Law. In this three states of matter lesson, students create Alka-Seltzer rockets using film canisters. Students record observations and data according to the scientific method and explain the gas...
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Sailing Through Bernoulli
Young scholars participate in a class discussion about Bernoulli's principle while looking at cross-sections of an airplane wing, and discussing the sail on a sailboat and the spoiler on a race car.
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The Drag of Drag
Students are introduced to drag. Then they summarize drag by saying that the drag is proportional to the square of the velocity. Students then solve problems an example of such a problem: Explain why swimming underwater is faster than...
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Disappearing Water
Students explore the water cycle. In this earth science lesson, students observe and measure water in a closed container and in an open container. Students record their observations and compare their sets of data to draw conclusions...
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Scuba Diving
High schoolers discover that scuba diving is more than a sport. It's a science that operationally integrates physics, chemistry, physiology, and oceanography. They perform a simple experiment which simulates the air tanks used in scuba...
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Boyle's Law
Students work in small groups and use a hand-held vacuum pump with a balloon under the dome with some air. Another deflated balloon is attached to the end where the air goes out. As the air is drawn out of the dome the first balloon with...
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Airplane Wings
Students examine the aerodynamics of a wing and how it generates lift. In this flight lesson students complete several experiments including how to build a paper plane and how airfoils affect performance.
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The Respiratory System
The student will calculate the vital capacity of the air in the lungs and trace the pathway of air into and out of the lungs. They describe the pressure changes that occur within the chest cavity when you breathe. They compare air that...