What an impressive task it is to make dental impressions! Pupils learn how dentists use proportional reasoning, unit conversions, and systems of equations to estimate the materials needed to make stone models of dental impressions....

Designed by School Power...NaturallySM, this lesson familiarizes advanced earth science and physics learners about the variables that affect our supply of solar energy. They examine gas spectra and perform calculations. There is an...

Build up from the previous activity where your learners charted the population growth and decay of a fish pond with M&Ms®. Have them look at the data from that activity and create a Now-Next, or recursive equations, to predict the...

Could you develop your own way to add fractions with unlike denominators? An in-depth task has scholars examine a fictional conversation between several people in which they discuss a method of adding fractions with unlike denominators....

Discover the joy and excitement of improving your math fluency through four different puzzles. Combine those with 25 different ways to represent numbers and you have hours of enjoyment that can be fun outside of the classroom as well.

A basic set-up leads to a surprisingly complex analysis in this variation on the question of surrounding a central circle with a ring of touching circles. Useful for putting trigonometric functions in a physical context, as well as...

What would it take to live on the lunar surface? Small groups build model rockets in order to simulate launching a habitat into space and rebuilding it. Divide the class into groups to design and build a model of a lunar habitat. The...

It is up to the learner to find the amount of juice originally in a bottle, knowing what fraction of the juice is left, and the amount that has been consumed. The accompanying commentary provides a useful and detailed description of...

Watch your pupils go round and round as they explore periodic behavior. Learners graph the height of a Ferris wheel over time. They repeat the process with Ferris wheels of different diameters.

Not all variables are created equal. Discover how variables in computer science are different from variables in math class. Scholars learn to work with variables in computer programming by developing a mental model for how variables...

Find the math in recipes. Young chefs will follow a recipe and investigate the total cost for materials. They measure amounts of food necessary for the recipe and compute the per person cost.

Groups explore illumination with NASA's Lighting Environment Test Facility (LETF) as a context. Using the TI-Nspire app, groups determine the lux equation that models their simulation. They then use the lux equation to...

Model real-life structures with mathematics. A project-based lesson presents a problem situation requiring classes to develop a function to model the St. Louis Arch and the Rainbow Bridge in Arizona. They create their models by...

High schoolers explore the different fields of bioengineering. They will create and interpret graphs from cancel cells data. They then calculate the amount of drugs found in blood and eliminated by the body over time.

Climate models mathematically represent the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land, sun, surface, and ice. Part two in the series of four lessons looks at the role greenhouse gases play in keeping Earth warm and has participants...

An excellent activity using word problems where pupils interpret and compute quotients of fractions. The commentary includes using a fraction bar model and equations to represent the problem. In this variation of the resource, the...

Every time a bell rings ... there is lightning in the area. The activity provides directions to build a model of a lightning detection system. Similar to a system designed by Benjamin Franklin, the system uses static...

Present the class with a question on whether the water level of a pond will rise they take a large rock out of a boat and drop it into the pond. Groups come down on all sides of the question and try to justify their answers. The activity...

Students use the GEEBITT excel model to explore how global average temperatures are affected by changes in our atmosphere in part two of this series of seven lessons. Working in groups, they discuss, analyze graphs, and enter data to...

There's no way around it—learners must use trigonometry to model the line of sight around a race track! Using the starting line as the origin, pupils model the straight line distance to any car using a trigonometric expression. The...

Here you will find a model of a linear relationship between two quantities, the water depth of a channel and the distance across the channel at water level. The cross section of the channel is the shape of an isosceles trapezoid. The...

You've located buried treasure, now what? Explore how to use algebraic and geometric methods to determine where to place a recovery ship based on the location of the treasure.

Explore the meaning of scale in relation to actual size through this activity. Young mathematicians examine scale models and determine their relationship to each other. They also find perimeter and area of each model.

Combine geometry and algebra concepts to solve a modeling problem. Young scholars consider the effect surface area has on volume. They write a cubic function to model the possible volume given a specific surface area and then...