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Temperature School
Students observ the cooling and warming of room temperature, hot, and ice cold cans of water by measuring the change in temperature over time. They then attempt to develop explanations for the observations made and apply their findings...
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And the Survey Says...
Eighth graders evaluate whether a certain argument is valid or invalid. In this science instructional activity, 8th graders discuss the importance of using unbiased evidence. They design an experiment that they can test in school.
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Careers in Science
Young scholars learn the trends in the current job market for scientists,
find where the jobs are, the range of salaries, and the job requirements.
They discover that scientists do some very interesting things, then
write a letter of...
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Variation 2
Seventh graders use previously completed graphs. They discuss what the graph tells them. They discuss height, and discuss the range of the class height. Students graph data of their height with a bar graph, and repeat with eye color.
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Pulse Rates
Students answer the question, "How will the intensity of exercise effect your heart rate?", using physical workouts and AppleWorks, or similar spreadsheet program. This instructional activity can conclude with the creation of a graph of...
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Square Foot Garden
Students plant a garden and keep track of it. In this geometrical garden lesson, students collect data from their garden twice a week. They graph their finding and figure out how many square feet of growing space each person needs...
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Stream Chemistry Monitoring
Students become familiar with real-world gathering of chemical data. The experience how the science is done: the nature of analysis, data collection, interpretation, and presentation. They study a nearby body of water for their experiment.
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Do the Elephants Need Sunscreen? A Study of the Weather Patterns in Etosha
Students analyze the weather patterns in Namibia. They create a graph of the yearly temperatures and use the internet to gather information. They discuss how the weather goes in cycles in the area.
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The Universe
Middle schoolers describe what scientists mean by an "expanding universe" in their own words. They explain how scientists comprehend the universie is expanding. Students comprehend the vast scale of the universe. They comprehend how...
Foundation for Water & Energy Education
How is Flowing Water an Energy Source? Activity C
Can the force of falling water through a tube vary by altering the diameter of the tube or its height? That is what physical scientists aim to discover in this activity, the third in successively more revealing activities on the power of...
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Open-Ended Scientific Method Lab
Students inspect a given problem and come up with a hypothesis. In this investigative lesson students come up with a hypothesis for a problem, test each hypothesis and evaluate how successful each one was.
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Stellar Observations
Ninth graders study the uses of spectroscopy and the operation of the Hubble space telescope. In this astronomy lesson students complete a lab activity that includes graphing star color and temperature.
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Fishkill
Students analyze data to determine the effect of thermal pollution on a certain species of fish. They graph temperature and dissolved oxygen and make inferences on the impact a change in temperature could have on the fish. As a class...
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Plot! Analyze! Draw your Conclusions!
Students download data reported from the Global Sun Temperature Project website. They graph and analyze the data looking for trends and patterns. They prepare a class report with their observations and post it to the website.
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Discovering a Law of Space Physics
Learners use data collected by an astronomer to determine the relationship between the time it takes the planet to orbit the sun and the average radius of the planet's orbit around the sun. Students use trial and error to find the...
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What is a Cloud
Third graders study clouds and how they are formed. They write acrostic poems about clouds and analyze and graph temperature data collected during varying degrees of cloud cover.
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Sea Surface Temperature Trends of the Gulf Stream
Students use authentic satellite data to produce plots and graphs of sea surface temperature as they explore the seasonal changes of the Gulf Stream.
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Measuring the Speed of a Wave
Students create an experiment in which they measure the speed of a wave and record the data in a graph. They work in small groups to write the procedure for the experiment and share it with another group for cross checking of the...
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Sea Surface Temperature Trends of the Gulf Stream
Students explore the importance of the Gulf Stream. Using a NASA satellite images, they examine the sea surface temperature. Students collect the temperature at various locations and times. Using spreadsheet technology, they graph the...
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The Effects of Environment on Plant Growth: Selecting Seeds for Survival on a New Planet
Fifth graders conduct experiments to compare seed germination and plant growth rates. They construct a hydroponic plant unit and a lighthouse. They care for the plants for a month and collect data for graphs. They write a report.
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Coral Bleaching in the Caribbean
Students use authentic satellite data on the NASA website to determine when the sea surface temperature meets the criteria to induce coral bleaching.
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Sea Floor Spreading II
Students import ocean bathymetry data from text files. They then graph these observations along with model predictions to assess the model's ability to simulate observed topographic features of the North Atlantic. Students use Excel to...
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Introduction to Science
Seventh graders investigate scientific methods to solve problems. They demonstrate creating data tables and graphs. They study the role of a scientist and the importance of safety in a science lab. They distinguish between an...
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Looking into Earth with GIS
Students work with data from a seismic wave model in a freely available GIS (geographic information system) program, ArcVoyager SE. Using a GIS, they examine maps and produce graphs to explore variations in seismic wave velocities at...