The PhET project at the University of Colorado creates "fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena." This particular one deals with Beer's Law. "The thicker the glass, the darker the brew, the less the light that passes through." Make colorful concentrated and dilute solutions and explore how much light they absorb and transmit using a virtual spectrophotometer! The simulation is also paired with a teachers' guide and related resources from PhET. The simulation is also available in multiple languages.

This activity is a scientific investigation focusing on inquiry after using the Foss Water Kit. The students will pose a question, create a procedure and produce a poster showing their findings.

Explore bending of light between two media with different indices of refraction. See how changing from air to water to glass changes the bending angle. Play with prisms of different shapes and make rainbows.

This activity will allow students to see light bending. The students will be able to calculate the amount of bend or refraction that occurs with various mediums.

Demonstrate the Bernoulli Principle using simple materials on a small or large scale. This resource includes two activities that allow learners to experience the Bernoulli Principle, in which an object is suspended in air by blowing down on it. Use this activity to explain how atomizers work and why windows are sometimes sucked out of their frames as two trains rush past each other.

Demonstrate Bernoulli's Principle using balloons and and pop cans. Real world concept of lift can be applied to an airplane demonstration.

Watch beta decay occur for a collection of nuclei or for an individual nucleus.

Watch beta decay occur for a collection of nuclei or for an individual nucleus.

This Cyberchase video segment features Bianca, who must figure out the fastest route to a movie premiere.

This article provides an overview of how teachers can use bibliotherapy to help students deal with social, emotional, and behavioral issues.

In this activity, a spinning bicycle wheel resists efforts to tilt it and point the axle in a new direction. Learners use the bicycle wheel like a giant gyroscope to explore angular momentum and torque. Learners can participate in the assembly of the Bicycle Wheel Gyro or use a preassembled unit to explore these concepts and go for an unexpected spin!

In this activity, students conduct an energy audit to determine how much carbon dioxide their family is releasing into the atmosphere and then make recommendations for minimizing their family's carbon footprint.

This suite of short video clips is part of a series produced by the Switch Energy project. There are several video segments that discuss different perspectives of biofuels as a renewable source of energy.

This video provides an overview of the research of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on converting biomass to liquid fuels.

This course covers sensing and measurement for quantitative molecular/cell/tissue analysis, in terms of genetic, biochemical, and biophysical properties. Methods include light and fluorescence microscopies; electro-mechanical probes such as atomic force microscopy, laser and magnetic traps, and MEMS devices; and the application of statistics, probability and noise analysis to experimental data. Enrollment preference is given to juniors and seniors.

This detailed chemistry lesson from the U.S. Department of Energy focuses on transforming vegetable oil into biodiesel through a process of transesterification. The process described offers a good model for many chemical reaction processes that are used to produce a viable product.

In this lab activity students generate their own biomass gases by heating wood pellets or wood splints in a test tube. They collect the resulting gases and use the gas to roast a marshmallow. Students also evaluate which biomass fuel is the best by their own criteria or by examining the volume of gas produced by each type of fuel.

This ZOOM video segment shows how to create a self-contained environment and explores evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

This is a long-term inquiry activity in which students investigate locations they believe harbor cellulose-digesting microbes, collect samples, isolate them on selective media, and screen them for cellulase activity. These novel microbes may be useful for the production of cellulosic ethanol. In the process they learn about plating techniques, serial dilutions, symbiotic relationships and enzyme specificity. Two methods are provided, one focusing on isolation of pure microbial strains, the other focusing on finding symbiotic communities of microbes. The companion activity is here: https://www.glbrc.org/outreach/educational-materials/bioprospecting-cellulose-degrading-microbes-filter-paper-assay

The purpose of this resource is to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of a classification system. Students sort birds into three possible classes based on each bird's beak: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Students compare their answers with a given set of validation data.