Energy: The Big Picture

Why do athletes load up on carbohydrates the evening before a competition? The lesson helps answer this question as it relates the type of food to the amount of energy it contains. After a discussion, scholars perform an experiment...

Are you nuts? An engaging experiment burns nuts to find their kilocalories. Young chemists analyze at least two different types of nuts with their experimental results versus what is on the package. The resource offers a great lab...

Only 10 percent of an incandescent bulb's energy is used to create light; the remaining 90 percent is heat. In the unit of activities, young chemists examine energy through hands-on activities, videos, discussions, and...

What is energy, anyway? Use this featurette as an introduction to your middle school energy unit. It successfully touches each of Earth's physical systems, the sun as our main source of energy, and the flow of energy through the food...

From burning wood for heat to riding a bicycle, converting one form of energy into another is an everyday process! Using a video clip, learners discover the sources of the thermal, mechanical, and electrical energies that make our lives...

It takes less than 10 minutes for energy from the sun to travel 90 million miles to Earth! In the first installment in a series of four, groups measure the amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth. They then discuss how this is...

Free energy, get your free energy here! Learners see that all organisms require free energy, which comes from the sun. The lesson explains the first two laws of thermodynamics and then analyzes metabolism, via glycolysis, on a very...

Energy has many forms ... but very few sources! How do we present this to young scientists? Explore the Definitions of Energy, PS3A, in a video about the Next Generation Science Standards. The narrator keeps it simple by relating...

Take your class up, up, and away with an engaging weather balloon simulation! Individuals get hands-on experience in creating and launching their own airborne labs to study how temperature and pressure affect substances at 100,000...

Less than 25 percent of published research proves reproducible. The video discusses the importance of duplicating results, introduces the challenge related to this task, and examines the issue from multiple points of view, allowing for...