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PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Darwin's Letters to Lyell

For Students 9th - 10th
In this letter written to his friend and mentor Charles Lyell less than three weeks after the publication of "On the Origin of Species", Darwin describes the reaction of the great anatomist Richard Owen to his theory. From Charles...
Article
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Evolution on Double Time

For Students 9th - 10th
In this excerpt from the PBS series "Evolution," award-winning science journalist Carl Zimmer describes how gene duplication may have been the key to the rapid evolution of the early stages of life on Earth.
Unit Plan
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Evidence for Evolution Web Quest

For Students 9th - 10th
This Web quest from the PBS series "Evolution" will help you investigate a variety of types of evidence for evolution.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Life's Grand Design

For Students 9th - 10th
Are nature's complex forms evidence of "intelligent design"? In this Evolution essay, biologist Kenneth Miller explains how the processes of evolution account for complex structures such as the human eye.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Hummingbird Species in the Transitional Zones

For Students 9th - 10th
This video segment from Evolution: "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" shows biologists Chris Schneider and Tom Smith studying hummingbirds and other animals in Ecuador. Their research is investigating the processes by which new species are formed.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Laetoli Footprints

For Students 9th - 10th
This Evolution video segment describes how the famous track fossils known as the Laetoli footprints might have been formed and what they can reveal about the creatures who left them.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Molecular Clocks: Proteins That Evolve at Different Rates

For Students 9th - 10th
In this graphic and article from "The Human Evolution Coloring Book" by Adrienne Zihlman, four different proteins from humans and horses are compared and the reasons each protein evolves at its own characteristic rate are discussed.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Sweaty T Shirts and Human Mate Choice

For Students 9th - 10th
This video segment from Evolution: "Why Sex?" explores the "sweaty T-shirt experiment," which showed that humans may unconsciously be drawn toward a specific kind of genetic variation in a mate.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: The Transforming Leap, From Four Legs to Two

For Students 9th - 10th
John Noble Wilford, a "New York Times" science writer, outlines various hypotheses on the origin of bipedalism.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Engineer a Crop: Transgenic Manipulation

For Students 9th - 10th
You're the geneticist now. In this interactive feature developed for the companion Web site for NOVA/FRONTLINE: "Harvest of Fear," use the latest in genetic technology to engineer your own "supercrop" of tomatoes.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Forensics and Dna Profiling

For Students 9th - 10th
Find out how DNA profilers analyze bits of tissue to identify human remains. From the NOVA: "Lost on Everest" Web site.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Genetic Drift and the Founder Effect

For Students 9th - 10th
This image of polydactyly illustrates one symptom of Ellis-van Creveld syndrome, which is commonly found in the Amish. Ellis-van Creveld is one example of the founder effect and genetic drift.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Genome Facts

For Students 9th - 10th
This list from NOVA: "Cracking the Code of Life" Web site provides some of the basic, yet impressive, facts and figures about the Human Genome Project.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: What's Coming to Dinner? Genetically Modified Foods

For Students 9th - 10th
Browse through a table full of genetically modified (GM) foods to see what's available now and what's to come. From FRONTLINE/NOVA: "Harvest of Fear."
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Animal Body Plans: Homeobox Genes

For Students 9th - 10th
The homeobox genes that define the basic body plan of mice and fruit flies are illustrated in this graphic from The Human Evolution Coloring Book by Adrienne Zihlman. The accompanying article describes how these genes act as "molecular...
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: How Dna Evidence Works

For Students 9th - 10th
In this article by An Meeker-O'Connell, discover how DNA evidence is processed before it goes to court.
Handout
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: How to Conquer a Genetic Disease

For Students 9th - 10th
In Blazing a Genetic Trail, by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, follow this three-step approach to treating genetic diseases.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: The Sequencing Race Begins

For Students 9th - 10th
This video segment from NOVA: "Cracking the Code of Life" looks at one of the key players in the race to decode the human genome.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Forensic Dna Analysis

For Students 9th - 10th
This video segment from NOVA: "The Killer's Trail" investigates the potential for DNA evidence to solve murder cases, even those from the distant past.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Atmospheric Oxygen

For Students 3rd - 5th
In this feature, adapted from Interactive NOVA: Earth, students explore the relationship between oxygen concentration and the well-being of various organisms by simulating a change in oxygen levels and observing what happens.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Scent of an Alewife

For Students 3rd - 8th
This video segment from NOVA: "Sea Behind the Dunes" tracks the return of spawning alewife fish from the open ocean back to the freshwater streams and ponds where they were born. [3:34]
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Seeing Through Camouflage

For Students 4th - 8th
This interactive feature from the NOVA: "Leopards" Web site presents a wide variety of ways in which animals use coloration to their advantage.
Activity
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Everest: Test Your Brain Under Low Oxygen Conditions

For Students 9th - 10th
This interactive feature from the NOVA: "Everest" Web site lets you take the same brain quizzes that researchers have used to test the brain function of climbers on Mount Everest.
Website
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Moriussaq: A Case Study in Hearing Loss

For Students 9th - 10th
This video segment follows neurophysiologist Allen Counter as he studies an epidemic of hearing loss in Moriussaq, Greenland, one of the quietest places on Earth. Footage from NOVA: "Mystery of the Senses: Hearing."