Almost every teen wants a car, but can they really afford one? The lesson walks pupils through how to identify a budget, find all of the costs associated with car ownership, and determine if they should buy the car or keep looking.

During the fourth activity of a series on Colombia, pupils discover the process to which the coffee plant becomes the coffee we drink. Pupils compare how locally grown foods get into homes to how coffee from Colombia gets into their mug.

Newton's Laws get the rocket to work, but do they serve any other functions? A six-page resource classifies rockets by the type of propellant they use. It then describes applications of Newton's Laws of Motion, both in the...

How do rockets fly? Teams design, build, and launch a rocket made from a two-liter bottle to explore forces on a rocket such as Newton's Laws of Motion.  During the design phase, young engineers draw a diagram of their rocket and...

Get into the swing of things. Pupils use a pendulum to demonstrate the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy and back. After measuring the speed of a pendulum and compare it to the calculated theoretical speed, they...

Slip sliding away. Groups investigates the two types of friction by running an experiment that allows them to calculate the coefficient of static friction and the coefficient of kinetic friction. The experiment uses a box, a...

Help learners understand the benefits of rearranging a formula. Scholars practice rearranging formulas for specific variables. They also analyze formulas to understand one variable's effect on the other. 

This Discovery Education activity provides the information needed to understand the basics of flight. Before taking off, young pilots learn the eight stages of the engineering design process. Small groups then design and build...

Focus on the conservation of energy, specifically looking at gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy, with a lecture that involves having friends throw light objects at each other to determine which has more kinetic energy and...

Here's a presentation that not only covers momentum, impulse, conservation of momentum in both one and two dimensions, angular momentum, torque, and the moment of inertia, but offers many applied guided practice problems as well.

The Lotus Effect ... is it not some kind of yoga pose. In the last installment of a nine-part series, young scientists observe the Lotus Effect on lotus leaves and water-repellent cloths. They observe how motion and damage affect the...

It is not always easy to walk the straight and narrow. In the sixth portion of a nine-part unit, groups actively recreate a graph depicting motion. Individuals walk toward or away from a motion detector while trying to match a given...

In 1993, five biomedical engineers in Edinburgh, Scotland, created the first functional bionic arm. In the activity, learners explore the world of bioengineering through discussion and hands-on exploration. In groups, participants...

Every region has a renewable resource that can be used to make hydrogen. But, what is hydrogen and why can it be used as an energy source? Find out with a presentation that answers these questions and then discusses where hydrogen is...

Building an accelerometer app for your Android device. Groups develop an app that uses the accelerometer on an Android device. The purpose of the activity is to reinforce the programming design. The post activity assessment challenges...

Small groups use rubber bands to accelerate an Android device along a track of books. They collect the acceleration data and analyze it in order to determine the device's velocity. 

Bathymetry is not a measure of the depths of bathtubs! Through the three lessons, scholars explore two different types of maps and how they are made. The resource focuses on topographic and bathymetric maps and teaching the techniques...

What can a mural teach pupils about computer science? The lesson has scholars create a mural on a wall to learn about bitmap and vector graphics. Along the way, they learn about the graphics coordinate system.

Introducing Mr. Robot. As an introduction to robotics, class develop a definition of a robot and make distinctions between real robots and those in science fiction. They also study the basics of programming in Java to...

Explore the makeup of the earth's atmosphere. Using the set of specific experiments, pupils examine the main elements and compounds present in the atmosphere. Their study extends to investigate the effects of atmospheric...

Steel is a man-made alloy or a mixture of metals. Lesson 18 in this series of 36 focuses on metals and their extraction from Earth. Individuals read about, discuss, and answer questions after learning how people find most metals, the...

Make the strongest beam possible using taffy? Groups mold a taffy-water mixture into a beam and a reinforcing material of their choice. To finish the final installment of a two-part series, participants test its strength by adding...

Consider the relationship between side length and area as an input-output function. Scholars create input-output tables for the area of squares to determine an equation in the first installment of a three-part unit. Ditto for the area of...

It is all about being equivalent. Class members convert between fractions, decimals, and percents. By using visual models, scholars verify their conversions in the 25th portion of a 29-part series.