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Melting and Freezing
Students explore how various substances change from a solid to a liquid or from a liquid to a solid and how temperature, pressure and nature play an important role in this process. In this melting and freezing lesson, students review the...
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Cooking with the Sun!
Students access prior knowledge of solar energy and understand that solar energy produces heat. In this solar cooker lesson, students complete grade appropriate experiments using the heat of the sun. Students complete a worksheet on...
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Eruption
Young scholars conduct an experiment simulating an underwater volcano based on reading The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top. They create a desktop volcano eruption demonstrating where magma comes from and how lava flows.
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Storm That Drowned a City
Students use a map to locate New Orleans and watch a video on the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. As a class, they watch a demonstration on how a wetland can reduce the impact of a hurricane. In groups, they perform their own...
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Water and Ice
Students perform experiments in pairs to visualize the changes in water during freezing and melting. In this properties of water lesson, students use their senses and inquiry tools to understand the changes in state of water. Suggested...
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What Makes a Kite Fly?
Ninth graders compare the nature of forces of gravity, lift, thrust, and drag. They select proper materials for making a kite and attach a proper tail. Students interpret and summarize the observations made during the flight of the kites.
Chymist
Determination of the Volume of CO2 in Pop Rocks
Where does the pop in pop rocks come from? An engaging activity asks scholars to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in a package of Pop Rocks candy. Learners dissolve the candy in water and use the solubility of CO2 to determine its mass.
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How Things Fly
Students explain basic principles of aeronautics such as gravity and lift. In this How Things Fly lesson, students visit the interactive, hands-on How Things Fly gallery at the Smithsonian. Students perform three experiments that...
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Investigating Motion
Students explore types of motion. For this motion experiment, students observe how objects move. Students work in small groups to discover the laws of motion.
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Gas Laws and Alka-Seltzer Rockets
Young scholars investigate the Ideal Gas Law. In this three states of matter lesson, students create Alka-Seltzer rockets using film canisters. Young scholars record observations and data according to the scientific method and explain...
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Sailing Through Bernoulli
Students participate in a class discussion about Bernoulli's principle while looking at cross-sections of an airplane wing, and discussing the sail on a sailboat and the spoiler on a race car.
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The Drag of Drag
Students are introduced to drag. Then they summarize drag by saying that the drag is proportional to the square of the velocity. Students then solve problems an example of such a problem: Explain why swimming underwater is faster than...
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Disappearing Water
Students explore the water cycle. In this earth science instructional activity, students observe and measure water in a closed container and in an open container. Students record their observations and compare their sets of data to draw...
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Scuba Diving
Students discover that scuba diving is more than a sport. It's a science that operationally integrates physics, chemistry, physiology, and oceanography. They perform a simple experiment which simulates the air tanks used in scuba diving.
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Boyle's Law
Students work in small groups and use a hand-held vacuum pump with a balloon under the dome with some air. Another deflated balloon is attached to the end where the air goes out. As the air is drawn out of the dome the first balloon with...
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Airplane Wings
Students examine the aerodynamics of a wing and how it generates lift. In this flight lesson students complete several experiments including how to build a paper plane and how airfoils affect performance.
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The Respiratory System
The student will calculate the vital capacity of the air in the lungs and trace the pathway of air into and out of the lungs. They describe the pressure changes that occur within the chest cavity when you breathe. They compare air that...
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Lesson 5: Boyle's Law
Students participate in a lab to verify Boyle's Law using applied force (weight) to do work on a closed isolated system of air. "Elasticity of Gases Apparatus, BASIX" from Sargent-Welch is the syringe apparatus used to measure volume...
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Gas Laws Experienced
Young scholars discover relationship between temperature pressure and volume as they perform research and experiments.
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Gathering Data About Respiration
Students engage in an experiment that tests how much air we breathe in and out during the respiration process. In this respiration lesson, students blow a typical breath's amount of air into a balloon. They use a ruler to measure the...
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Radical Raptors
Young scholars are introduced to raptors and their role in the environment. They identify three characteristics of raptors and list several types of raptors found in nature. They discuss their positive and negative experiences with...
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Blast Off to Learning
Students explain the laws of volume and pressure, identify what a limiting reagent is and why it is important in a chemical reaction, and distinguish between fossil fuels and renewable energy sources.
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Water 3: Melting and Freezing
Students understand that most substances may exist as solids, liquids, or gases depending on the temperature, pressure, and nature of that substance. This knowledge is critical to understanding that water in our world is constantly...
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How Hot is Too Hot?
Fifth graders use the scientific method to conduct experiments on the temperature effects on organisms. In this temperature effects on organisms lesson plan, 5th graders observe and record the hatching or the developing of organisms into...