Come On Baby Light My Fire

Ahoy, matey! Here is an engineering expedition that mini mariners are sure to be swept away by! After reading a brief description and history of periscopes, they work in crews to construct one. Use this activity to enhance a lesson on...

What does it cost to keep the lights on? Through a hands-on activity, class members use a watt meter and determine the amount of energy different types of light bulbs use. The class then determines the financial and environmental cost of...

Pupils examine how solar energy can supply power and heat on the lunar surface. As groups design and build a solar-powered water heating system, they test their system to determine the change in temperature of the water and redesign it...

What do physicists and musicians have in common? A lot more than you might think. After first viewing a slide show presentation and completing a series of skills practice worksheets on the physics of light, sound, and electricity, young...

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 include...

Emerging engineers read about Arduino software and how it can be used. Then they follow a nine-step tutorial to connect an Arduino board to a computer and put it to work! The objective is to code a program that will cause an LED to...

Introduce teams to quantum dot solutions with an activity that has them expose solutions to a blacklight, observe the colors, and take measurements. Groups graph the data and analyze the dependence between particle size and color...

Though UV radiation can damage skin, it isn't all bad. The third installment in a six-part series allows the class to study the structure and function of skin. They learn about the different types of skin cancer and the SPF rating...

Let there be light. The last installment of a seven-part series has pupils conduct an experiment on light attenuation through different numbers of transparency sheets. They then relate the results back to how X-rays measure bone density.

Are these two light sources the same? Groups use a white card and a little cooking oil to create a photometer that allows for the comparison of two lights. The Inverse Square Law provides a way to calculate the actual difference in...