Chemistry students are often required to convert moles to grams and vice versa. Part of this also includes atomic mass, atomic weight, and atomic number. A problem is the understanding that a mole is just the name of a specific quantity, just as a dozen is a name for having 12 of something. Just as it is easy to determine the count of how many eggs you have if there 12.5 dozen, so it is easy to convert a given number of moles of a substance into the corresponding weight in grams. This paper shows mole to gram conversions, and vise versa, is actually just a routine a "conversion of units" problem.

This video segment adapted from NOVA relates the dramatic story of vulcanologists trying to predict the timing of the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.

Build your own system of heavenly bodies and watch the gravitational ballet. With this orbit simulator, you can set initial positions, velocities, and masses of 2, 3, or 4 bodies, and then see them orbit each other.

This is a guided inquiry investigation for students to determine the state of matter of a mystery material and to make potential real world applications/products for the mystery material.

This activity is an investigation of a "mystery material" where students have to determine whether the substance is a solid or a liquid. This activity can be done as part of an earth science or chemistry lesson.

Join a group of middle-school students on a visit to a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they experiment with "mystery mud" and learn about the relationships between magnetism, particle motion, and changes in the state of matter.

In this classroom guided inquiry lesson, students will complete a serious of tests using five different mystery powders. Student will develop hypotheses, make observations, and draw conclusions about what each powder is and the physical and chemical reactions that occur when heat, water, iodine, and vinegar are added to each substance.

In this activity, students play the roles of detectives investigating the loss of a city's water supply by evaporation. They will design an experiment to see whether heat or wind causes the greater loss of water, conduct the experiment, and write a report detailing their findings.

The NAVDAT project is compiling existing age, chemical, and isotopic data from Late Cretaceous to Holocene extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks from the western United States, British Columbia, and northern Mexico into a web-accessible electronic database. NAVDAT will be integrated into a geographic information system (GIS) to allow visualization of complex age-compositional patterns in volcanism throughout the study region. The addition of necessary relational and graphical tools will allow users of the database to address a wide variety of issues concerning the geologic evolution and present volcanic state of western North America.

This module teaches the basic rules of naming binary compounds for general chemistry.  Hydrocarbons and acids are not included.

This course focuses on the latest scientific developments and discoveries in the field of nanomechanics, the study of forces and motion on extremely tiny (10-9 m) areas of synthetic and biological materials and structures. At this level, mechanical properties are intimately related to chemistry, physics, and quantum mechanics. Most lectures will consist of a theoretical component that will then be compared to recent experimental data (case studies) in the literature. The course begins with a series of introductory lectures that describes the normal and lateral forces acting at the atomic scale. The following discussions include experimental techniques in high resolution force spectroscopy, atomistic aspects of adhesion, nanoindentation, molecular details of fracture, chemical force microscopy, elasticity of single macromolecular chains, intermolecular interactions in polymers, dynamic force spectroscopy, biomolecular bond strength measurements, and molecular motors.

In this video adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, find out about the discovery of a new building material, the carbon nanotube, whose physical properties could theoretically enable the creation of a 22,000-mile elevator to space.

This video is one of a series produced by the Switch Energy project. It reviews the pros and cons of natural gas as a source of energy.

This homework problem introduces students to Marcellus shale natural gas and how an unconventional reservoir rock can become an attractive hydrocarbon target. It is designed to expand students' understanding of hydrocarbon resources by introducing an unconventional natural gas play. Students explore the technological factors that make conventional source rocks attractive reservoir rocks and how this advance impacts both U.S. energy supply and the environment.

This article provides background information related to natural resources of the poles, and renewable and non-renewable energy.

The courses on this portal are or will be Zero-Textbook-Cost courses. Course faculty are creating and adopting teaching, learning and research materials that permit no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

The following course pages provide links to the syllabus and open course content, websites and learning tools:

Biology
SCB 201 – General Biology I
Chemistry
SCC 110 – Foundations of Chemistry
SCC 201 – General Chemistry I
SCC 202 – General Chemistry II
Physics and Astronomy
SCP 101 – Topics in Physics
SCP 105 – Life in the Universe
SCP 140 – Topics in Astronomy
SCP 201 – Fundamentals of Physics I
SCP 202 – Fundamentals of Physics II

Students research the structure of salt to understand the difference between molecular compounds and ionic compounds

This is a hands-on lab activity about the composition of salt. Learners will explain the general relationship between an element's Periodic Table Group Number and its tendency to gain or lose electron(s), and explain the difference between molecular compounds and ionic compounds. They will then use household materials to build a model to demonstrate sodium chloride's cubic form and describe the nature of the electrostatic attraction that holds the structure of salt together. Background information, common preconceptions, a glossary and more is included. This activity is part of the Aquarius Hands-on Laboratory Activities.

Produce light by bombarding atoms with electrons. See how the characteristic spectra of different elements are produced, and configure your own element's energy states to produce light of different colors.

The Adirondack Mountains tour is part of the New York Landscape Regions Collection of Google Earth Tours, created by a group of New York State science educators. This tour provides an introduction to the geology of the Great Range and the High Peaks as viewed from Algonquin Peak. It also addresses the issue of acid rain, which is a persistent environmental concern in the Adirondacks.