Curated OER
Exponential Decay
Students study exponential decay and its application to radiocarbon dating. In this exponential decay lesson, students use candy to model the time it takes for something to decay. Students also graph the data they collect and...
Illustrative Mathematics
Carbon 14 Dating in Practice I
How old is the plant? Here is a task that presents the exponential decay function for carbon 14 in a plant. Pupils use the function to estimate the amount of carbon 14 in the plant when it died and analyze the function to find what...
Kenan Fellows
Half-Life
Scholars shake their way to understanding half-life with the help of candy. They observe and record which side candy lands on to graph the exponential decay in the fifth instructional activity of seven integrating chemistry and algebra....
Curated OER
Murder in the First Degree - The Death of Mr. Spud
Secondary learners investigate exponential functions in a real-world scenario. They collect data on the temperature of a cooling baked potato, enter the data into lists, and graph the data using a scatter plot before finding an...
National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
Nuclear Popcorn
Make your lesson on radioactive decay pop with this lab exercise. Using popcorn kernels spread over a tabletop, participants pick up all of those that point toward the back of the room, that is, those that represent decayed atoms. As the...
Discovery Education
Submarines and Aircraft Carriers: The Science of Nuclear Power
As physics masters view this presentation, they learn how nuclear power is used in submarines. They use Google Maps to plot a course through the ocean and calculate the time required for surfacing and traveling. They learn about fission,...
Curated OER
Get a Half-life!
Pupils explore decay functions and the half-life of a substance. Through an M&M activity with calculators, students collect and graph data. They determine the linear, quadratic and exponential functions of the graph. Pupils...
Curated OER
Rhinos and M&M's
High schoolers analyze patterns of exponential models by collecting data in paper folding and M&M investigations. They use graphing calculators to create scatter plots that lead to equations for the exponential models. They then...