Students explore plate boundaries and how they can help us predict where earthquakes are most likely to occur. They will also examine changes in the earth's surface that are caused by earthquakes.
Students learn how the atmosphere and oceans affect one another, especially as related to El Nino.
Students investigate the energy sources used in students' communities.
Students distinguish between renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy and compare the benfits and drawbacks of each.
Students explore the relationship between gravitational forces and the mass of objects, the changes in speed and direction of objects, and the distance between objects.
Students will build on their existing knowledge of the solar system as they research one of the planets in order to determine whether a manned mission to that planet would be feasible. Students will collect information about the geology, composition, and orbit of their assigned planet. They will then work collaboratively to create a proposal for or against planning a trip to the planet to be presented to the rest of the class.
Students explore the role of gravity in the motion of falling objects.
Flowering plants keep the world cooler and wetter than it would be otherwise.
Students explore a bay ecosystem and how the different organisms of the ecosystem compete with one another for resources.
Students discover what can be learned from fossils and in doing so, realize the difference between fact and theory. They will also gain understanding of how fossils are formed.
Students recognize the kind of information that can be accumulated by studying dinosaur fosisls as well as understand that some fossil facts are made based on comparisons with living organisms.
This lesson is the first of a two-part series focused on how scientists perform their work. These lessons make use of a book called The Frog Scientist, by Pamela S. Turner. Students will read the book and view and analyze supplemental resource materials to better understand how scientists are using the scientific method to study human environmental impact.
This lesson is the first of a two-part series focused on how scientists perform their work. These lessons make use of a book called The Frog Scientist, by Pamela S. Turner. Students perform a field investigation of their schoolyard"™s ecosystem, which includes living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) factors. They will brainstorm questions to ask about their outside school grounds, make and record observations, interpret their results, draw conclusions, make predictions, and report their work in the form of a science poster.
Students will model carbon dating and how it can be used to determine the age of fossils and other materials. They will use a simple graph to extrapolate data to its starting point.
Students learn about the problems of waste disposal and how recycling can help to reduce the amount of waste we create.
Students will come to understand that in sexually reproducing organisms, such as humans, typically half of the genes come from each parent. Students will examine a fictional pedigree and determine which gene is responsible for a given trait. The genetic information for individuals is depicted as a jigsaw puzzle.
Students explore the geological history of Mercury and the other terrestrial planets, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The development of the lesson revolves around GeoHunter, an interactive for planetary geology. They will also learn about MESSENGER, the spacecraft mission to Mercury.
The resource provides students information on where germs exist, how they can get into and affect the body, and how the body defends itself against them.
This Science Update looks at the lifespan of cold and flu viruses. Supplemental resources, including a background essay and discussion questions, are also provided.
This lesson provides students with an opportunity to explore the climate change concept in greater depth. The focus is on plant competition, reproductive output, and how these concepts may vary based on climate change predictions. The emphasis in this lesson is the effect of increasing amounts of water, predicted by global climate change models for some parts of the United States, on the production of fruits and seeds (measures of reproductive output).