During a unit on density, pupils ponder whether or not temperature affects this property. By carefully inserting blue cold water and yellow hot water into a room-temperature sample, they will see the answer. Make sure to have done the...

Engage young scientists in the upper-elementary and middle school grades with this collection of simple experiments. Whether you're teaching about heat transfer, density, or potential energy this resource has a lab for you.

Explore the concept of density within states of matter—gases, liquids, and solids—through a group experiment in which young scientists test objects' texture, color, weight, size, and ability to sink or float.    

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...

Is your current lesson plan for salt and freshwater literacy leaving you high and dry? If so, dive into part one of a seven-part series that explores the physical features of Earth's salt and freshwater sources. Junior hydrologists...

Snow, ice, and water are all composed of H2O. Does that mean they all have the same volume? Discover the ways that the densities of these substances determine their volumes, and how they change based on their current states of...

How does chemistry help deep-sea explorers? Part four of a five-part series of lessons from aboard the Okeanos Explorer introduces middle school scientists to technologies used in ocean exploration. Groups work together to analyze data...

Science learners simulate what happens when ice breaks up and floats on water and how increased pressure on ice causes it to melt faster. They view a clip from the movie, The Day After Tomorrow, and relate their lab activities to what...

Gummy bears are tasty, but did you know they are also used to determine color and light properties? Use the activity as a way to demonstrate light absorption, light reflection, and refraction with high schooler....

Let's go sailing! An instructive unit includes six lessons with multiple activities to teach scholars about density, center of gravity, buoyancy, and the Archimedes Principle. They can complete the final project of building a boat...

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...

There is a specific zone, or distance from a star, that a planet must be in order to have water in a liquid form. The activity demonstrates how flux density depends on its distance from the source. A photovoltaic cell gets power to...

An engating lesson plan relates mass and volume to better understand density. Young scientists explore and experiment with floating and sinking as well as density cubes. Then, they solve how to make a sinking item float.

Science, technology, and math come together in this one combination exercise. Analyzing the common soda can from both a purely mathematical perspective and a scientific angle allows for a surprisingly sophisticated comparison of...

An engaging unit on wildfires includes three sections, including a background section with eight lessons and five activities, a field experience section with 13 lessons and five activities, and a conclusion section featuring an...

Two scenarios are presented for chemistry detectives to decipher. Both require the use of an infrared spectrometer and focus on the examination of polymer materials. In the first, lumps in polyethylene bottles are analyzed. In the...

Model an oil spill cleanup. An engaging engineering lesson has groups using aerogels to simulate an oil spill cleanup (vegetable oil in water). Along the way, they learn about nanotechnology and hydrophilia/hydrophobia.

Not all liquids are the same. Investigate the viscosity of different fluids with a series of activities designed for eighth grade science. As learners move through learning centers with different experiment setups, they determine...

Covering both permeability and porosity, scholars perform a hands-on experiment testing various soil types. The material includes a pre-lesson plan worksheet to help focus pupils on the task at hand. 

Note that this lesson is best paired with the preceding lesson in the unit. In that lesson, elementary physical scientists observed that the color coating of M&Ms® candies do not mix when dissolved off of the chocolate surface. Now...

Air, air, everywhere, but what's in it, and what makes Earth's air so unique and special? Journey through the layers above us to uncover our atmosphere's composition and how it works to make life possible below. Pupils conduct...

Environmental science classes read articles about two different scientific studies. One is about the effects of contraceptive chemicals on fertility, and the other is about how a pesticide may be reducing bone density in exposed...

Outer space may be a lot closer than you think! Science scholars model the layers of the atmosphere using transparencies to gain insight into the scale of space. The resource includes ideas to tailor the activity to the skill level of...

Atoms, elements, and molecules, oh my! Teaching the fundamentals of chemistry to curious sixth graders has never been easier to accomplish. Here is a resource that pulls together everything needed to get them off to a good start,...