Students devise a scientific investigation to detect acids and bases in common materials. Students will prepare a test solution whose color changes when an acid or base is added.
This is an interactive resource in which the students learn about the systems of the body including the respiratory system.
Students learn about animal features and behaviors that can help or hinder their survival in a particular habitat.
This lesson exposes children to a variety of animals and guides them through observation of animal similarities, differences, and environmental adaptations. This lesson can be used as part of a study of plants and animals. Before doing the lesson, students should know the meanings of the terms plant, animal, and living.
Students use the books of April Pulley Sayre to explore how living organisms depend on one another and on the environment for survival.
Students explore the relationship between a bird's beak and its ability to find food and survive in a given environment.
Students research specific examples of birds (predators) and what they eat to survive (prey) to help them better understand the predator/prey relationship.
Students build a model of the respiratory system and investigate the inputs, outputs, and interactions of the parts in the system.
This lesson is the first of a two-part series on brine shrimp and how the growth and survival of organisms depend on the physical conditions of their environment. Students will design a test to determine the optimum salinity for hatching brine shrimp.
This lesson is the second of a two-part series on brine shrimp and how the growth and survival of organisms depend on the physical conditions of their environment. Students will raise brine shrimp, designing an artificial environment in which they can survive.
Students use the example of the Burrowing Owl to illustrate how human activities can control the fate of a species. In addition to exploring the negative impact community development has had on the owl's habitat, students will read about proactive steps people have taken to reverse this destruction.
Students describe environmental and herditary factors that increase the chance of developing cancer.
Students review and compare plant and animal cells, and then build a model of an animal cell.
Students review cell structures and investigate how the components of a cell operate as a system. Throughout the lesson, students will compare a factory to a cell, beginning to understand how both can be thought of as a system.
Students use modern biological classification systems to group animals that are related. Students will pair various vertebrate animals and learn more about their common traits. By doing this, students will begin to classify organisms in a more sophisticated way.
Students will gain a better understanding of what energy is, how it can be changed into other forms of energy, and how physical and chemical processes contribute to that. They also will learn what happens to energy when materials are heated in a combustion system, as in an auto gasoline-powered engine.
Students will make inferences about the cause of shadows, by observing and making their own shadows in the sun. Many properties of shadows (such as heat and brightness of light) will also be identified firsthand as the students conduct simple experiments to observe changes that are comparable to those experienced by the MESSENGER spacecraft in its voyage to and around Mercury.
In this activity, students learn how to grow plants and about the kinds of things that promote growth (warmth, sunlight, water, soil). Their activities involve learning about how seeds and plants grow and participating in a simple, in-class gardening project. This is the second lesson of a two-part series on where food comes from. These lessons are intended to help students understand that most of the food they eat comes from farms.
This research resource provides information on the complexity of depression.
Dolphins and other marine mammals have pretty big brains compared to the size of their bodies. That?s one indication of high intelligence, and anyone who has seen them perform at an aquarium or zoo can attest to that fact. This Science Update introduces us to one scientist who?s trying to find out how dolphins got so brainy.