This video features the Thresher shark, which may very well be the strangest looking shark in the world, with a tail almost as long as its body. This shark is very rare, almost never seen by divers...until now. Using advanced diving technology, Jonathan visits a remote reef in the Philippines where Thresher sharks show up every morning to be cleaned by small fish. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

In this video, filmed thirty miles off the coast of North Carolina, there is a shipwreck on the bottom, 130 feet down. Swarming around the wreck are dozens of Sand Tiger sharks. They look menacing, but they seem to be very docile. What are they all doing there, in one spot? That's what Jonathan wants to find out. Using a variety of filming techniques, Jonathan attempts to discover the secrets of the Sand Tiger shark gatherings at the wrecks, and does the first ever night dive with these shark..talk about scary! Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

The questions in this activity help students to understand the effects of consuming sports drinks and when and how the consumption of sports drinks can be beneficial or harmful. This activity provides the opportunity to review some basic concepts related to osmosis, cellular respiration, mammalian temperature regulation, and how our different body systems cooperate to maintain homeostasis.

 This inquiry unit leads students through the different perspectives behind a decision to have a dam removed. This unit looks at similar Washington state dam removal decisions as well as the complex issue of having the Election dam removed near Puyallup, WA. Students will be introduced to the stories and traditional ways of knowing about salmon that the Puyallup Tribe has built their culture upon. Then they will explore the science behind hydroelectricity and build models to discover how carbon neutral energy is gathered through hydro dams. This inquiry unit ends with students researching different perspectives surrounding the current (2021) decision to remove the Electron dam including: the Tribe’s Fishery department, the ecosystem, the city council, the fishermen and the hydro-electrical company who currently owns the dam. With their research, students will do a socratic seminar to mimic the court case lawsuit that is ongoing against the Electron Dam. 

The purpose of this resource is to investigate the idea that every dynamic system has energy and matter in different forms.

Crash Course AP Science: Today Hank explains the skeletal system and why astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko are out in space studying it. He talks about the anatomy of the skeletal system, including the flat, short, and irregular bones, and their individual arrangements of compact and spongy bone. He'll also cover the microanatomy of bones, particularly the osteons and their inner lamella. And finally he will introduce the process of bone remodeling, which is carried out by crews of osteocytes, osteoblasts, and osteoclasts.

This analysis and discussion activity contains three "soap opera" episodes that contribute to student understanding of the principles of inheritance and the relevance of genetics to everyday life. In the first episode, students explain the relevant biology to answer the probing questions of a skeptical father who wants to know how his baby could be albino when neither he nor his wife are albino. The second episode, "Were the babies switched?" covers the concepts of co-dominance, incomplete dominance, polygenic inheritance, and the combined effects of genes and the environment on phenotypic characteristics. In the third episode, students analyze sex-linked inheritance.  This activity is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.

First, students analyze a hypothetical example of exponential growth in the number of infected individuals. Then, a class simulation of the spread of an infectious disease shows a trend that approximates logistic growth. Next, students analyze examples of exponential and logistic population growth and learn about the biological processes that result in exponential or logistic population growth. Finally, students analyze how changes in the biotic or abiotic environment can affect population size; these examples illustrate the limitations of the exponential and logistic population growth models. This activity helps students meet the Next Generation Science Standards.

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.

For more than twenty years, people have been feeding a large group of friendly stingrays at a place in the Cayman Islands. In this video, Jonathan travels to Grand Cayman to meet up with the famous marine artist and researcher Dr. Guy Harvey who is studying the relationship between humans and stingrays. He even shows Jonathan how to hold a stingray safely in his arms. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

In this analysis and discussion activity, students learn how the function of cells, organs and organ systems is related to structure (including shape, constituent components, and relationships between components). Students analyze multiple examples of the relationship between structure and function in diverse eukaryotic cells and in the digestive system. In addition, students learn that cells are dynamic structures with constant activity and they learn how body systems interact to accomplish important functions.

This reference list has more than 25 books on biodiversity. For each title, the book's author, publisher, and publication date are given. The diverse list includes broad introductions to biodiversity, insightful looks at evolution and extinction, examinations of the partnership between insects and flowers, portraits of vanishing species and explorations of the factors contributing to a global biodiversity crisis.

STUDENT ACTIVITY - 2nd Grade: This is a distance-learning lesson students can complete at home.Students will conduct a simple experiment to see if plants need sunlight and water to grow.This activity was created by Out Teach (out-teach.org), a nonprofit providing outdoor experiential learning to transform Science education for students in under-served communities.

Perhaps best known for its role as the antagonist in the film Jaws, the Great White shark is probably the world‰ŰŞs most feared animal, and easily the most fearsome of the sharks. In this video, Jonathan travels to Mexico to meet a Great White up close and personal. Nothing can prepare him for the sheer size and strength of a fully grown Great White shark! He learns how white sharks are being studied and how they react to both people and sea lions. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

When manatees were first seen by Columbus, he thought they were mermaids..but he had been at sea for a long time! Today these gentle marine mammals are threatened by loss of habitat and collisions with boats. This video segment explores the endangered manatees of Florida and their struggle to survive, as well as some of the people who are working to save them. Please see the accompanying lesson plan for educational objectives, discussion points and classroom activities.

This BioBulletin Web site takes a close look at the medicinal power of plants. The site includes text, videos, photographs, and interviews with key scientists. Age-Old Remedies discusses how nearly 80 percent of the world's population relies on medicines made from natural ingredients. The Power of Traditional Medicine takes an historical look at medicinal herbs and traditional healers. Bio-Prospectors Needed reports on the symposium "The Value of Plants, Animals, and Microbes to Human Health" that was held at the American Museum of Natural History. Tracking Down a Power Plant tells the story of a tree in the Sarawak rain forest that contains a possible cure for AIDS.

This winning entry in the museum's Young Naturalist Awards 2001 by Amber, a 17 year old student from Iowa, studies tardigrades in the U.S. and Antarctica. Her essay details her field study in Missouri, which compared the diversity, distribution, and abundance of tardigrades both upwind and downwind from the James River power plant and an account of the 10 days she spent in Greenland with international tardigradologists, during which she found a rare occurrence in tardigrade behavior.

In this activity, student teams design and conduct a scientific investigation in which they explore the conditions necessary for life. They conduct observations of environmental conditions both indoor and outdoor, and determine the range of variation they see. They compare these data with published temperature data for Earth, Mars, Pluto and Venus. The activity supports inquiry into the real world challenge of searching for life in extreme environments. The resource includes several student data sheets, data table and images, and a teacher's guide. Materials needed for this activity include weather instruments (e.g., thermometers, barometers, anemometers). This is Activity A of two activities in the first module, titled "Temperature variations and habitability," of the resource, "Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate?" The course aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.

In this activity, student teams create a knowledge map of the essential characteristics or factors of a planet with a habitable climate, identifying range of inputs, outputs and variables of a planetary environmental system. Identified characteristics are compared to extreme environments on Earth, such as the Antarctic or the Sahara desert, and are used to consider the real life challenge of searching for life in extreme environments. The resource includes a student data sheet, questions, teacher's guide and scoring rubric. This is Activity B of two activities in the first module, titled "Temperature variations and habitability," of the resource, Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The course aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.