Blowing and Flowing

Four demonstrations with the Van der Graaf generator are delineated for you to share with your science classes. Instructions, explanations, and safety precautions are included. However, a background explanation of the static electricity...

Students explore aerodynamics and Bernoulli's principle by devising ways to keep bubbles aloft.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in! During a unit on air pressure, you could incorporate this simple experiment in which participants try blowing a candle out through both ends of a funnel. Which one is more effective? 

Fifth graders examine air flow, pressure, condensation and examine how to read a weather map.  In this informative lesson students learn vocabulary then see how these terms can be applied by viewing a few demonstrations pertaining to the...

Three days of erosion exploration await your elementary geologists. Learners begin by examining rivers via Google Earth, then they model water flow in sand, and finally, they identify resulting landforms. This lesson is written...

Students investigate the properties of heated air. They make predictions about what they think makes the wind blow on a worksheet, and conduct two experiments to demonstrate the properties of heated air. Students heat a bottle until a...

Young scholars examine how gas pressure causes eruptions of explosive volcanoes, and demonstrate how the build-up of gas from dissolving alka seltzer causes the lid of a film canister to blow off. They compare/contrast between the model...

Students identify the advantages and disadvantages of wind farms and turbines. They examine how weather conditions can affect their effectiveness and how engineers are trying to solve the problem. They discover how engineers use this...

Fifth graders study volcanoes. They watch a demonstration that represents the eruption of a volcano and discuss the similarities and differences between the model and a real volcano.

Trim the end of a straw to construct a vibrating wind instrument. Everyone in your class can make their own during a lesson on sound waves.