This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest and a Question of the Day activity concerning the effect of the proportionality constant, k, on the y-intercept and position of an exponential graph where k<0 and C is an arbitrarily fixed value in f(x)=Ce^(kx).

In this individual research project, a senior thesis student conducts a regression analysis that investigates the effects of race, ethnicity, and poverty on high school graduation rates in Florida. The data are easily obtainable from the Florida Department of Education. The project can be modified to be a group research project in a Research Methods Class or a Special Topics Upper Level Economics class.

This activity begins as a classroom investigation, but may extend to a field investigation where students will determine the effects of air temperature on seed germination. This is accomplished by developing investigative questions, recording, and analyzing data.

In this undergraduate research and service learning project, students and faculty collaborate on a study of the effects of condemned/restored homes in their college town on surrounding property values. While this example describes an experience in a small, upper-level elective course, it includes suggestions for modifications of design and learning goals for other learning levels and environments.

This worksheet helps students think about the cause and effect of pressure/temperature changes in subsurface and how these changes would affect the state of a solid rock. In this worksheet, students are given 6 different scenarios and associated pressure/temperature charts with a solidus line and a starting pressure/temperature point. Scenarios include heating and melting due to a nearby intrusion, diagenesis, decompression melting, cooling of magma at the surface, and adding water to the system. For each scenario, students draw an arrow from the starting point to show how the pressure and temperature would change. For example, students are told that a rock in the subsurface quickly rises towards the surface and melts, so fast that the temperature doesn't change much. A student would then draw a vertical arrow up to show that there is only a change in pressure. There scenarios are chosen to help students better understand the complexities of the subsurface in terms of pressure and temperature.

This worksheet uses the sketch-understanding program with built-in tutor: CogSketch . Therefore, students, instructors, and/or institution computer labs need to download the program from here: http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/software/cogsketch/. At any point during the worksheet, students can click the FEEDBACK button and their sketch is compared to the solution image. The built-in tutor identifies any discrepancies and reports pre-written feedback to help the student correct their sketch until they are done with the activity. Once worksheets are emailed to the instructor, worksheets can be batch graded and easily evaluated. This program allows instructors to assign sketching activities that require very little time commitment. Instead, the built-in tutor provides feedback whenever the student requests, without the presence of the instructor. More information on using the program and the activity is in the Instructor's Notes.

We have developed approximately two dozen introductory geoscience worksheets using this program. Each worksheet has a background image and instructions for a sketching task. You can find additional worksheets by searching for "CogSketch" using the search box at the top of this page. We expect to have uploaded all of them by the end of the summer of 2016.

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This activity is an outdoor lab where students gather data and calculate velocity, acceleration, momentum, and force of a vessel they create to safely deliver 2 eggs from the roof to the pavement below.

These are activities where students explore chemical reactions, as well as the effects of concentrated solutions.

Students test the question, "Do eggs balance on the equinox?" Students develop their own procedure, analyze their data and come up with their own conclusions.

In this set of activities, students gain experience in creating multiband image composites and layering multiple raster data sets (DEM and hillshade, geologic map, and satellite imagery in a variety of spectral band combinations) to find interesting correlations and features and to propose a number of research projects that could be carried out using the data sets. You might also be interested in our Full GIS course with links to all assignments.

This activity investigates the oceanographic and climatic characteristics of El NiÃo/La NiÃa (ENSO) events using observational data from moored ocean buoys in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Data are obtained from NOAA's Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) project website which provides a web-based interface for accessing and displaying oceanographic data. In addition to providing an introduction to ENSO, this activity is designed to give students practice interpreting real oceanographic observations by emphasizing the description and identification of patterns in large data-sets. Students first describe patterns in sea-surface and cross-sectional transects of ocean temperatures and surface winds associated with "normal", El NiÃo, and La NiÃa years and then use this as a basis for classifying observations from unknown years and interpreting connections between oceanographic and atmospheric processes occurring in the tropical Pacific.

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Interactive Lecture Demonstration to illustrate that impulses are larger in elastic collisions than in inelastic collisions if other factors are the same.

In late September (of an election year), one class session is devoted to developing a list of issues key to the class and likely to be discussed by the candidates. The list is converted into 3-5 questions all students will research and answer. Each student is assigned a candidate (President, Governor, congress, state legislature). An effort is made to assign each student a candidate who will appear on his/her ballot and to assign third party candidates.

Student research candidates' positions using web resources, news papers, and campaign materials. Students are strongly encouraged to contact the campaign directly and question the candidate, if possible.

Students report back to the class with a 3-5 minute presentation and a poster that may be displayed in a college commons area. Reports are presented a week prior to the election.

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This is a series of lab activities where students complete experiments for open, closed, series and parallel circuits.

For this experiment, students use a DC motor as a generator and various shaped turbine designs to test which design produces the most electrical power. Using a fan to generate the "wind", students attach different blades made of folded paper or card stock to the motor to see how much power is generated.

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This simple demonstration shows the interaction between electricity and magnetism. Two coils of wire are held close to each other, but not touching. One is attached to a music source, such as a small radio or iPod, and the other is attached to an external speaker. Students can hear the music through the speaker even though there is no direct connection.

The purpose of this hands on activity is to experiment with reflectance properties of various surfaces and to gain a better understanding of the effects of the position of the energy source and the detector (azimuth and zenith angles) on the recorded (perceived) brightness.

This activity is a simple way for students to understand the basics of electron energy levels, a fundamental atomic concept.

As the core activity of petrology portion of a mineralogy/petrology course, students cooperatively conduct petrographic and electron microprobe analytical studies on suites of Central Blue Ridge metamorphic rocks collected during class field activities. We make use of a remotely operable electron microprobe instrument at the Florida Center for Analytical Electron Microscopy (FCAEM) to conduct all analyses in class.

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Our remote access system permits students to interact with our electron microprobe and obtain visual information about the tasks performed by lab personnel. Students in a petrology class, for instance, can view backscatter-electron images of a particular sample, ask for specific points to be analyzed, and immediately see the resulting spectrum of characteristic X-rays. With this interaction, such an exercise is more much pedagogically effective. Our video streams mean that students do not need to know how to operate the instrumentation -- that is not the point for students in a mineralogy or petrology course. Instead, seeing a live backscatter-electron image or an X-ray spectrum from a point they chose catches the interest of students and allows them to make decisions while they learn about mineral associations. Many classrooms are now equipped with Internet connections and a computer with a projection system. As a result, a lecturer in such a classroom can project our video streams onto a screen or wall so that the entire class can observe the analysis of a sample. Lab rooms also often have internet-capable computers, so a small group of students could, on the phone, ask lab personnel to move to some point on a sample and examine a specific crystal.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This is a lab activity where the students group the given elements as metals, nonmetals or metalloids.