Middle schoolers explore how the angle of sunlight affects the Earth's temperature and seasons and then apply this understanding to their local situation.

Students explore the layers of earth's atmosphere and conduct an experiment to identify carbon dioxide. They construct models using styrofoam to represent molecules in the atmosphere's layers. To discover how sunlight efffects...

Students discover electrical resistance and how it is directly related to thermal energy through a hands-on activity. Working in groups, they wrap a wire around a thermometer and the positive and negative poles of a D cell battery and...

Students identify different types of nutritional relationships in a coral reef system and trace the energy flow.  In this marine biology instructional activity students create a simulation of acidification of the coral reef. 

Students will build a solar panel. In this physics lesson plan, students will begin with a lecture on energy and proceed into research for their solar panel. The solar panels will be field tested and problems and solutions will be shared...

Students explore the concept of mass balance, flow rates, and equilibrium using a simple water bucket model. In this JAVA based online interactive modeling activity, they vary flow rate into the bucket, initial water level in the bucket,...

In this Bohr model activity, students read about Neils Bohr and the model he proposed of the atom. Students answer nine questions about his theory that electrons travel in orbitals and give off energy when they are excited.

Students define electromagnetic radiation, list major categories and uses of electromagnetic waves, identify potential health risks with electromagnetic waves, and demonstrate understanding of Plank's constant by solving quantitative...

In this atomic spectra worksheet, students answer eighteen questions about wavelengths of light, the emission spectrum, energy of photons, the frequency of electromagnetic radiation and electrons in the excited state.

In this light worksheet, students match 12 terms related to light and the electromagnetic spectrum to their definitions, they order waves by their speed, they analyze the energy and wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and they...

Students identify the amount of heat given off by solar energy. For this solar energy lesson, students complete an experiment using soil and sand measuring the heat from solar energy.

In this ecology learning exercise, students will review 10 vocabulary words associated with the basic principles of ecology. This learning exercise has 10 fill in the blank questions.

Students learn the food pyramid and compare their meals with suggested guidelines. Students graph their lunches, discuss the results and how their choices affect their level of energy.

In this chemistry worksheet, students measure the different vibration levels of energy. They use the fundamental vibration frequency formula to calculate the Morse potential for a given chemical bond. There are 2 questions.

Biotech engineers discover that changes in the DNA code for cell wall formation can help create crops better suited for biofuel production. They extract DNA from wheat germ. They decode paper strips with codes and relate the activity to...

Three activities introduce upper elementary ecologists to photosynthesis and food webs. In the first, an experiment is set up to determine how plants respond to different types of light. In the second, they connect organism cards with...

Emerging environmentalists work in groups and pretend that each is a power company generating electricity for a community. They consider the costs of building a renewable electricity generator that will increasingly replace generating...

Students use NASA satellite data to see cloud cover over Africa.  In this seasons lesson students access data and import it into Excel. 

Using a hands-on approach, learners explore the effect of friction on objects. Learners use toy cars, shoes, wood, metal, and more to experiment with the causes and effects of friction. Afterwards, they conduct experiments in which they...

Give small groups of physical scientists tokens that represent electrons in a photovoltaic cell. They play a dice game in which they move the tokens around, representing the flow of electrons through the p-n junction of a semiconductor...

Young scholars analyze line plots. In this weather lesson using real NASA data, students discuss how weather affects the way the Earth is heated by comparing different line plots.

Students investigate the interdependencies of plants and animals, and study what a food web is. They create a food web using yarn and images.

Students work in small groups to create a power point illustrating Newton's Laws of motion as related to a sport of their choice.

Students design and construct a solar cooker. They use the Internet to research solar collectors and the process of changing light energy into heat energy.