Read and fill in the blanks of this passage explaining atomic history. Each blank has a dropdown menu with choices. When you finish, click CHECK MY ANSWERS. If you pick a wrong answer, the right answer will be displayed along with your...

See drawing from Hans Christian Orsted's lab notebook showing an experiment in which an electric charge passing through a wire seemed to create a magnetic field!

This site provides a detailed overview of the TRACE (Transition Region and Coronal Explorer) satellite mission, data received, details about the instrumentation, and how to interpret the data.

Fire lighted the night for many centuries. Then came Sir Humphry Davy and the birth of the arc lamp, an invention built upon in the years that followed by many.

French physician Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne invented a device that electrically stimulates muscles. The apparatus gave him new insight into neuromuscular disorders, earned him the epitaph of "father of electrotherapeutics," and...

Odd though it seems today, when Thomas Davenport was selling one of the first electric motors way back in the 1830s, nobody was buying.

A cyclotron is a machine that allows scientists to shoot particle beams at other particle beams. The result of doing this is a spectacular smash up - but that's not why scientists do it.

As more and more American households acquired telephones, the pressure was on to create a better cable to accommodate the increasing demand. Engineers Lloyd Espenschied and Herman Affel answered the call.

Two years after Englishman John Ambrose Fleming invented a two-electrode vacuum tube, American inventor Lee De Forest one-upped him by developing a tube with three electrodes.

Several years before the telegraph created by American inventor Samuel Morse revolutionized communications, two German scientists built their own functional telegraph.

Few inventions have shaped technology as much as the electric motor, but the very first version - the Faraday motor - didn't look anything like the modern motor.

Zenobe Theophile Gramme (1826 - 1901) invented the first industrial generator, or dynamo. A deceptively simple-looking machine, it consisted of 30 coils wrapped around a spinning ring of iron.

Acoustics, variable resistance and allegations of foul play contribute to the exciting story of the invention of the telephone.

A fun look at how Van de Graaff generators illustrate electrostatic forces. (Java tutorial)

Heating a metal conductor makes it more difficult for electricity to flow through it. See why in this tutorial. (Java tutorial)

The mass spectrum of a material, deduced using a machine called a mass spectrometer, reveals how many isotopes of a given element are to be found in the material. See here what these spectra look like and how they are useful. (Java...

To understand a bubble chamber, picture the long, white streak an airplane leaves in its wake. That's water vapor produced by condensation from the plane's hot exhaust. Until the water particles evaporate, you can follow the streak to...

Scientists use image furnaces to grow crystals at very high temperatures. A built-in camera allows them to observe in action a delicate process that is equal parts art and science.

This site offers a wealth of online textbook-related materials that encourage the discovery of science in the world around us. Enter the site to access material on specific topics. Each section contains reading material (complete with...

Learn how to build your very own speaker with items usually found around the house. Follow step-by-step instructions and discover how to use your speaker to listen to the radio.

A teacher lesson plan which includes several student activities on magnetism, force fields, and magnetic induction. May provide an idea for a student project or lab investigation.

A teacher lesson plan which includes a station lab; students navigate through four stations with separate activities on magnetic principles. Easily adaptable as a student project.

Read and fill in the blanks of this passage explaining charges and electricity. Each blank has a dropdown menu with choices. When you finish, click CHECK MY ANSWERS. If you pick a wrong answer, the right answer will be displayed along...

Understand the energy transformations that happens when you light a bulb with a battery. Activity requires students to build a simple circuit and take temperature and time measurements. Lab includes procedure with questions that can be...