Exploring Buoyancy

Need some activities to go along with your unit? A collection of hands-on activities from PBS offers opportunities to add to your electricity, sound, and force units. The electricity activities revolve around building a pinball-type...

Complete teacher narrative and presentation slides for teaching about Earth's water make up the bulk of this lesson. Embedded within the slide show, you will find videos about the water cycle, keeping track of the limited supply of fresh...

Join the fight to reduce plastic waste. A hands-on STEM activity first teaches scholars about the scourge of plastic waste. They then measure the dimensions of water bottles to calculate surface areas and volumes before using the surface...

Environmentally friendly engineering teams construct a water wheel and experiment with its speed and the resulting amount of weight it can lift. Consider following this activity with two more of the same title by the same publisher when...

Hands-on experience with valves and water flow supports young researchers' understanding of valve operation. Attached resources for learners are text-dense; I'd break up the text into smaller pieces for groups to read and present...

Begin by discussing pressure and showing a video clip of James Cameron's record-setting deep-sea dive. Then assign lab groups to explore how depth affects pressure and to construct a manometer. There is another video to follow the...

What are the issues surrounding water quality? Viewers of this short presentation gain information about the importance of clean water, the lack of fresh water, water contamination, and ways that engineers treat water. 

Tired of waiting for hot water? Groups of three determine the efficiency of an electric water-heating device. They calculate the amount of energy it takes to heat the water and the theoretical amount of energy required to heat the water....

Students explore water usage around the world.  In this "water" social studies lesson, students brainstorm ways in which water is used.  Students visit the Water in Africa website to view pictures of water usage in Africa.  Students...

Water filtration — that's pure genius! Groups test the ability of a water filter to purify water by running chlorine contaminated water through a filter and measuring the chlorine concentrations as they filter the water. They then graph...