Students learn about various natural hazards and specific methods engineers use to prevent these hazards from becoming natural disasters. They study a hypothetical map of an area covered with natural hazards and decide where to place natural disaster prevention devices by applying their critical thinking skills and an understanding of the causes of natural disasters.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students are introduced to our planet's structure and its dynamic system of natural forces through an examination of the natural hazards of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunamis, floods and tornados, as well as avalanches, fires, hurricanes and thunderstorms. They see how these natural events become disasters when they impact people, and how engineers help to make people safe from them. Students begin by learning about the structure of the Earth; they create clay models showing the Earth's layers, see a continental drift demo, calculate drift over time, and make fault models. They learn how earthquakes happen; they investigate the integrity of structural designs using model seismographs. Using toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, they create and test structures in a simulated earthquake on a tray of Jell-O. Students learn about the causes, composition and types of volcanoes, and watch and measure a class mock eruption demo, observing the phases that change a mountain's shape. Students learn that the different types of landslides are all are the result of gravity, friction and the materials involved. Using a small-scale model of a debris chute, they explore how landslides start in response to variables in material, slope and water content. Students learn about tsunamis, discovering what causes them and makes them so dangerous. Using a table-top-sized tsunami generator, they test how model structures of different material types fare in devastating waves. Students learn about the causes of floods, their benefits and potential for disaster. Using riverbed models made of clay in baking pans, students simulate the impact of different river volumes, floodplain terrain and levee designs in experimental trials. They learn about the basic characteristics, damage and occurrence of tornadoes, examining them closely by creating water vortices in soda bottles. They complete mock engineering analyses of tornado damage, analyze and graph US tornado damage data, and draw and present structure designs intended to withstand high winds.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students learn about biomimicry and how engineers often imitate nature in the design of innovative new products. They demonstrate their knowledge of biomimicry by practicing brainstorming and designing a new product based on what they know about animals and nature.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members show you how to make your very own electroscope. You can use it to find out if an object is electrically charged.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
In this video segment, the ZOOM cast demonstrates how to use cabbage juice to find out if a solution is an acid or a base.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
In this interactive activity from ChemThink, take a closer look at atomic structure, properties, and behaviors.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Play with a bar magnet and coils to learn about Faraday's law. Move a bar magnet near one or two coils to make a light bulb glow. View the magnetic field lines. A meter shows the direction and magnitude of the current. View the magnetic field lines or use a meter to show the direction and magnitude of the current. You can also play with electromagnets, generators and transformers!
Material Type: Simulation
This interactive periodic table developed for Teachers' Domain provides detailed information about the chemical properties of elements and illustrates the electron configurations that determine those characteristics.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Students learn about energy flow in food webs, including the roles of the sun, producers, consumers and decomposers in the energy cycle. They model a food web and create diagrams of food webs using their own drawings and/or images from nature or wildlife magazines. Students investigate the links between the sun, plants and animals, building their understanding of the web of nutrient dependency and energy transfer.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students evaluate various everyday energy conversion devices and draw block flow diagrams to show the forms and states of energy into and out of the device. They also identify the forms of energy that are useful and the desired output of the device as well as the forms that are not useful for the intended use of the item. This can be used to lead into the law of conservation of energy and efficiency. The student activity is preceded by a demonstration of a more complicated system to convert chemical energy to heat energy to mechanical energy. Drawing the block energy conversion diagram for this system models the activity that the students then do themselves for other simpler systems.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Learn about conservation of energy with a skater dude! Build tracks, ramps and jumps for the skater and view the kinetic energy, potential energy and friction as he moves. You can also take the skater to different planets or even space!
Material Type: Simulation
This lesson focuses on how food packages are designed and made. Students will learn three of the main functions of a food package. They will learn what is necessary of the design and materials of a package to keep food clean, protect or aid in the physical and chemical changes that can take place in a food, and identify a food appealingly. Then, in the associated activity, the students will have the opportunity to become packaging engineers by designing and building their own food package for a particular type of food.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
This video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey looks at the invention of the automobile and the development of mass production.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Generate electricity with a bar magnet! Discover the physics behind the phenomena by exploring magnets and how you can use them to make a bulb light.
Material Type: Simulation
Learn about the physics of resistance in a wire. Change its resistivity, length, and area to see how they affect the wire's resistance. The sizes of the symbols in the equation change along with the diagram of a wire.
Material Type: Simulation
Students work in pairs or small groups to identify and categorize various objects. One student is blindfolded and the other student chooses five objects for their partner to identify. The blindfolded student has to describe and try to identify the object based solely on touch. Both students then record their data, describing the objects first as human-made or natural, then living or non-living, and finally physical characteristics.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
From The Human Evolution Coloring Book by Adrienne Zihlman, four different proteins from humans and horses are compared in this graphic and article, and the reasons each protein evolves at its own characteristic rate are discussed. Each protein is useful for measuring evolutionary change over a different time scale. ***Access to Teacher's Domain content now requires free login to PBS Learning Media.
Material Type: Reading
This video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey considers modern technology's impact on society.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This diagram from NASA's Earth Science Enterprise illustrates the Earth's carbon cycle . ***Access to Teacher's Domain content now requires free login to PBS Learning Media.
Material Type: Diagram/Illustration, Reading
This graphic from Biology by Kenneth R. Miller and Joseph Levine suggests how some recent hominid fossil finds might fit into the overall picture of hominid evolution. As more fossils are found and further analysis advances our understanding of human evolution, this picture will almost certainly be revised.
Material Type: Reading
