Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Meet a 12 Year Old App Developer

For Students 9th - 10th
Most 12-year-olds love playing video games- but Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them. After developing iPhone apps like "Bustin Jeiber," a whack-a-mole game, he is now using his skills to help other kids become developers. [4:33]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Is There a Limit to Technological Progress?

For Students 9th - 10th
Many generations have felt they've reached the pinnacle of technological advancement. Yet, if you look back 100 years, the technologies we take for granted today would seem like impossible magic. So- will there be a point where we reach...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Future of Air Travel

For Students 9th - 10th
It used to be that you could get on a Concorde jet and fly across the Atlantic ocean faster than the speed of sound, but what does the future hold for supersonic flight? Sci Show takes a look. [8:16]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Why Doesn't Anything Stick to Teflon?

For Students 9th - 10th
Teflon was in the spacesuits the Apollo crew wore for the moon landing, in pipes and valves used in the Manhattan project, and it may be in your kitchen, as the nonstick coating on frying pans and cookie sheets. So what is this slippery...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Why Don't Ants Get Stuck in Traffic?

For Students 9th - 10th
Last year Americans wasted nearly 1 million collective years staring at each others' tailpipes. But there is another species on earth whose population numbers in the trillions, but who doesn't get stuck in traffic - how? It's Ok to be...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Can Machines Read Your Emotions?

For Students 9th - 10th
Computers can beat us in board games, transcribe speech, and instantly identify almost any object. But will future robots go further by learning to figure out what we're feeling? Kostas Karpouzis imagines a future where machines and the...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: What's the Fastest Way to Alphabetize Your Bookshelf?

For Students 9th - 10th
You work at the college library. You're in the middle of a quiet afternoon when suddenly, a shipment of 1,280 books arrives. The books are in a straight line, but they're all out of order, and the automatic sorting system is broken. How...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Much of Human History Is on the Bottom of the Ocean?

For Students 9th - 10th
Sunken relics, ghostly shipwrecks, and lost cities aren't just wonders found in fictional adventures. Beneath the ocean's surface, there are ruins where people once roamed and shipwrecks loaded with artifacts from another time. Peter...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Could Human Civilization Spread Across the Whole Galaxy?

For Students 9th - 10th
Could human civilization eventually spread across the whole Milky Way galaxy? Could we move beyond our small, blue planet to establish colonies in the multitude of star systems out there? These questions are pretty daunting, but their...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How the Band Aid Was Invented: Moments of Vision 3

For Students 9th - 10th
It is estimated that Johnson & Johnson have made an astounding 100 billion Band-Aids since they were invented in 1920. But where did the idea come from? In the third installment of our 'Moments of Vision' series, Jessica Oreck shares...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Why No Aquarium Has a Great White Shark

For Students 9th - 10th
Many have tried to keep a white shark in captivity, but most of these attempts ended with dead sharks. Vox explains why. [5:54]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Rosalind Franklin: Dna's Unsung Hero

For Students 9th - 10th
The discovery of the structure of DNA was one of the most important scientific achievements in human history. The now-famous double helix is almost synonymous with Watson and Crick, two of the scientists who won the Nobel prize for...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: 5 of the Worst Computer Viruses Ever

For Students 9th - 10th
Not all computer viruses are created equal. Michael Aranda from SciShow describes 5 of the worst computer viruses of all time and how exactly they became so powerful. [9:37]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Carl Sagan on the Existence of Extraterrestrials

For Students 9th - 10th
Carl Sagan discusses the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, the wonder of our own place in it all, and the science behind understanding the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial beings. [6:24]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How to Fly Around the World Without Fuel

For Students 9th - 10th
Imagine if we could fly day and night using only solar energy. The expertly engineered Solar Impulse plane is flying around the world delivering a powerful message: clean technologies can achieve the seemingly impossible. Powered by a...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Transistors Work

For Students 9th - 10th
Gokul J. Krishnan describes what a transistor is and how this small device enables all the amazing things computers can do. [4:54]
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Computer Memory Works

For Students 9th - 10th
In many ways, our memories make us who we are, helping us remember our past, learn and retain skills, and plan for the future. And for the computers that often act as extensions of ourselves, memory plays much the same role. Kanawat...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The World's Roundest Object (And Why It Exists)

For Students 9th - 10th
The world's roundest object helps solve the longest running problem in measurement- how to define the kilogram. A kilogram isn't what it used to be. Literally. The name, weight, and definition of a kilogram has been changing constantly...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Turing Test: Can a Computer Pass for a Human?

For Students 9th - 10th
What is consciousness? Can an artificial machine really think? For many, these have been vital considerations for the future of artificial intelligence. But British computer scientist Alan Turing decided to disregard all these questions...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Do Solar Panels Work?

For Students 9th - 10th
The Earth intercepts a lot of solar power: 173,000 terawatts. That's 10,000 times more power than the planet's population uses. So is it possible that one day the world could be completely reliant on solar energy? Richard Komp examines...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: The Ethical Dilemma of Self Driving Cars

For Students 9th - 10th
Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets today. And while these cars will ultimately be safer and cleaner than their manual counterparts, they can't completely avoid accidents altogether. How should the car be programmed if it...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: Let's Make History by Recording It

For Students 9th - 10th
What if Anne Frank hadn't kept a diary? What if no one could listen to Martin Luther King's Mountaintop speech? What if the camera hadn't been rolling during the first moon landing? Actively listening to the voices of the past and the...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Do Hard Drives Work?

For Students 9th - 10th
The modern hard drive is an object that can likely hold more information than your local library. But how does it store so much information in such a small space? Kanawat Senanan details the generations of engineers, material scientists,...
Unit Plan
TED Talks

Ted: Ted Ed: How Computers Translate Human Language

For Students 9th - 10th
Is a universal translator possible in real life? We already have many programs that claim to be able to take a word, sentence, or entire book in one language and translate it into almost any other. The reality, however, is a bit more...