This unit on plant identification helps students prepare for their fieldwork by developing their observational skills and introducing them to resources that will help them with plant identification. It's designed to be completed in five or more sessions and has comprehensive curriculum materials information for teachers, including overviews of binomial nomenclature and dichotomous keys. Additionally, a guide to finding local specialists is available online. There are optional activites and information on supplemental resources available on line.

This article, part of Biodiversity Counts, reports on the process of doing a plant inventory. The article discusses how scientists begin by marking out the plot, using colored flagging and permanent marker, why you may need to divide a plot into smaller subplots if the plants you're inventorying are smaller than trees, and some of the difficulties scientists face in the field when they're working in particularly dense areas.

This fun Web article is part of OLogy, where kids can collect virtual trading cards and create projects with them. Here, they learn about the Earth's outer shell and its constant movement. It begins with an overview that explains tectonic plates. There is an animation that shows recent earthquakes and their relationship to plate boundaries. Students can click to explore 12 individual volcanoes, mountains, hotspots, and earthquakes. For each of the geological formations or events, they will see a map that shows how the plates are moving, an animation about plate interaction, stats, and a story about that particular formation or event.

This online article is from the Museum's Seminars on Science, a series of distance-learning courses designed to help educators meet the new national science standards. "Profile: Albert Einstein," part of the Frontiers in Physical Science seminar, briefly covers Einstein's life and work including his Special Theory of Relativity and the paper that gave the world E=mcĺ_, his Nobel Prize in Physics, his influence yet exclusion from the Manhattan Project, and his promotion of peace and human rights.

This fun Web site is part of OLogy, where kids can collect virtual trading cards and create projects with them. The site opens by telling kids that people have learned to change the food we eat. The first comic strip looks at a farmer who works to produce a larger, redder, tastier tomato. The second comic strip tells kids about genetic modification and imagines a scientist putting the flounder's "anti-freeze" gene inside the DNA of a tomato. Food for Thought presents kids with two scenarios about genetically modified food, asking them if they think they're good ideas.

This winning entry in the museum's Young Naturalist Awards 1999 by Mary, a 13 year old student from New York, takes a look at how rocks and fossils provide much of Earth's history. Her essay discusses the great variety of sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks found on the north shore of Long Island, how all three types were formed and the specific rocks she collected.

This reference list contains brief descriptions of and links to five Web sites that provide a broad range of remote-sensing resources.

This Remote Sensing reference list contains annotated links to free software for viewing remotely sensed data.

This article, part of Biodiversity Counts, examines how to responsibly collect and keep specimens. The article discusses the reasons why collecting specimens is important and the behaviors and attitudes that define responsible collecting for both scientists and students.

In this hands-on OLogy activity, kids learn how blubber acts as insulation between an animal's inner organs and the chilly ocean. The activity begins with look at blubber that explains how it works and how an animal's behavior and environment can affect the thickness of its blubber. The illustrated, step-by-step directions show how to make and test two kinds of gloves,one with a layer of blubber and one without. It includes a fun look at pilot whales and how they use their blowholes to release excess body heat.

This article, part of Biodiversity Counts, examines site preservation, focusing on a new national park in El Salvador. The article discusses the questions faced as part of the decision-making process, the formation of an advisory committee in the early 1990s to study the park and make recommendations for how it should be managed, the committee's recommendations, and a description of those changes that are in the works, such as opening a portion of the park to the public.

This fun Web site is part of OLogy, where kids can collect virtual trading cards and create projects with them. Here, they learn about the human genome project by clicking through an online slide show, hosted by kids, that answers these questions: What's a genome, anyway?What is the human genome project? What does it mean to me?

In this classroom activity, students create models of the spinning Earth and see how the planet's revolution around the Sun creates differing daily and seasonal patterns of dark and light. The printable five-page handout includes a series of inquiry-based questions to get students thinking about daily and seasonal light cycles, detailed experiment directions and a worksheet that helps students use the experiment results to gain a deeper understanding of why Antarctica doesn't have daily nights and days.

This article, part of Biodiversity Counts, reports on the thought process of selecting a research site. The article has five tips from working scientists.

Using simple, inexpensive items, students build and test submarine models in a single class period. They gain insight into the engineering that's required to make these machines ascend, descend, and hover safely in extreme environments. The printable eight-page handout includes a series of inquiry-based questions that get students thinking about the complex engineering required for submersibles, illustrated experiment directions, and a worksheet that includes thought-provoking questions along with areas for recording experiment data.

This OLogy activity gives kids a grounded way to understand the scale of the planets in our solar system. The activity begins with a brief overview that tell them why all planets are round and introduces them to the concept that the planets vary widely in size. Kids are then asked to create a model of the solar system using found objects that match the provided scale in inches for the planets. The activity ends with a series of challenges, which include arranging the planets according to size and distance from Earth.

This article, part of Biodiversity Counts, offers tips for sorting and identifying arthropods. The article discusses the series of steps involved in identification and suggestions for how students can use them.

This Web site profiles AMNH's Southwestern Research Station (SWRS), a year-round field station that allows biologists, geologists, and anthropologists to study the diverse environments and biotas of the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. The site includes an overview of the field station and its work, information on courses offered, and information for visitors, researchers, interns and volunteers.

Students ponder "weightlessness" in this creative Moveable Museum unit. The four-page PDF guide includes suggested background readings for educators, activity notes, step-by-step directions, and information about where to obtain a video that enhances the lesson.

This hands-on OLogy experiment uses Jell-O, fruit, nuts, and candy to demonstrate how space bends around anything that has mass. The activity begins with kid-friendly introductions to the concept of mass and Einstein's theory of bending space. The illustrated, step-by-step directions include notes about how the fruit, nuts, and candy represent stars, planets, and other objects in space. At the end, kids are encouraged to celebrate their new-found knowledge by digging into their edible space.