New ReviewDid you know that space flight has its own field of engineering? The 34th video in the Crash Course Engineering series looks at aerospace engineering and its two branches, aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. It...

A good concept map requires high thought processes. This makes it a great tool for teaching and evaluating your pupils. A helpful article describes a great approach for teaching young scholars the art of concept map building and how best...

Scientists discovered the key to nautilus buoyancy when they X-rayed the shell of living mollusks. An educational video shares these X-rays and explains how the process works. It connects evolutionary changes, a unique circulatory...

Eureka! Using the clay boats made in the previous lesson, learners investigate the idea of buoyancy and water displacement to finish the last installment of five in a Floaters and Sinkers unit. Their observations during the activity...

Clay itself sinks, but clay boats float. Why? Young engineers build clay boats to learn about buoyancy. They test the weight the boats can hold using washers and then tweak their designs to make improvements, following the engineering...

Clay's as good a material as any to build a boat, right? An introductory lesson sets the stage for two activities associated with buoyancy. The first involves building boats out of clay, while the second uses these boats to measure the...

Whatever floats your boat. Young engineers learn about density by measuring the masses and volumes of boxes filled with different materials. Using their knowledge of densities, they hypothesize whether objects with given densities will...

Potentially get all the way across the water. The fourth of five design challenges asks pupils to develop a plan for a paddle-powered boat that will store its energy. Given a limited number of supplies, the class members design, build,...

Whatever floats your boat—with some additional weight. The first activity in a five-part series challenges pupils to design a boat to hold pennies. Using the design process, learners design, build, and test their boats, making sure they...

Sometimes in physics, the logic is a little illogical. A video presentation shows how to use extreme cases to apply logic to physics stumpers. The examples pertain to displacement situations, but scholars can apply the concept to all...

Balloons will go where you want them to. Young pilots first add paper clips to a balloon to make it neutrally buoyant. They then use cardboard to steer the balloon in different directions, taking air pressure into account.

Save the soup! Scholars devise a flotation device using straws, balloons, foam, corks, and other objects. A can of soup must stay afloat for at least a minute with this device—your dinner might depend on it!

Will your next buoyancy lab rise to the occasion? Make a splash with action figure divers! Teams of young physicists explore the relationship between mass and buoyancy by adding weights or balloons to achieve a diver that neither sinks...

What is the best way to test water quality? Using plastic bottles, scholars create monitoring sensors to test water quality. Creating three different sensors allows individuals to measure water quality at different water levels.

Why does cereal clump together in milk? Scientists answered this question in 2005 with the help of physics and math. A video explains the relationship between buoyancy, surface tension, and the meniscus. It teaches how to attract or...

Need to demonstrate buoyancy to your class? Rise to the occasion with a video from Veritasium! The narrator demonstrates how a golf ball behaves in dish detergent and saltwater, then adds the detergent to the saltwater for a surprising...

Swimmers know to float by turning their bodies horizontally rather than vertically, but why does that make a difference? In an interesting lesson, scholars explore buoyancy and the properties of air and water. They test cups to see which...

How do astronauts know how to live and work in a weightless environment? It doesn't come naturally! Junior physicists conduct experiments to examine the link between buoyancy and microgravity. Each activity illustrates a different aspect...

Engineer an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to study concepts of physics. Using household materials, collaborative groups design and build an AUV and then test Newton's Laws of Motion as they apply them in underwater environments...

Here's a lesson plan that will really float your boat! Introduce physical science scholars to the relationship between buoyancy and density through an assortment of individual and collaborative exercises. Lab groups work together to...

How does a scuba diver control whether they sink or float? Scholars observe the relationship between absolute pressure and depth below the surface in an undersea simulation. They control the diver size and depth to center of mass to see...

Does the temperature of the surface of the earth relate to the movement of the earth's plates? Three variables — temperature, composition, and thickness encourage scholars to discover plate tectonics. They create mountains, volcanoes,...

What do we do when a dive is too dangerous for humans to accomplish? Send in the robots! Middle school scientists get acquainted with several different models of submersible robots in the second lesson of six from NOAA. Lab groups then...

Scholars build a boat using an assortment of materials such as foam plates, aluminum foil, and skewers, then test its buoyancy with pennies. Challenge boat builders to construct the strongest or fastest boat in a healthy competition with...