A Phylogenetic Perspective for the Cladistically Challenged

Pack just enough to fit. Crews determine what personal items to take with them on a trip to Mars. Each team must decide what to take with them on a two-and-a-half year trip to Mars and whether their items will fit within the allotted...

Students use diagrams to compare structural differences that taxonomists use to classify animals. For this classification lesson plan, students compare structures of different species from given diagrams. In one diagram they identify the...

Militaries throughout history have used topography information to plan strategies, yet many pupils today don't understand it. Scholars use Legos and a contour gauge to understand how to construct and visualize topographic profiles. This...

Is the moon relatively close? Relatively far away? Examine some images of Earth and the moon together ... and answers will vary. The narrator examines the problem of scale in an eye-opening video. He uses a basketball and a tennis ball...

A lesson plan where students solve problems by using cladistics to determine phylogenies. Problems require that students determine which characteristics are ancestral or derived by looking at both dinosaurs' remains and primate skulls....

This page discusses how the cladistic level of classification includes information from molecular biology to establish evolutionary relationships. The page discusses how this information is used to do this.

Learn how to read and draw phylogenetic trees, or cladograms. [10:57]

Students use M&Ms to simulate radioactive decay of elements.

Nuclear energy powers the Mars rovers as well as provides energy in more than 30 countries around the world. While some believe nuclear energy is the future of energy production, others worry about the risk factors and radioactive waste....

Knowing about the hydrologic cycle is the first step to understanding the carbon cycle. Upper graders discuss the earth's water content, polar ice caps, and the concept of the ecological cycle as it applies to carbon, nitrogen, and other...