Learners will build an open spectrograph to calculate the angle the light is transmitted through a holographic diffraction grating. After finding the desired angles, the students will design their own spectrograph using the information learned. The activity is part of Project Spectra, a science and engineering program for middle-high school students, focusing on how light is used to explore the Solar System.

Explore tunneling splitting in double well potentials. This classic problem describes many physical systems, including covalent bonds, Josephson junctions, and two-state systems such as spin 1/2 particles and ammonia molecules.

This text explores a few of the many concepts that frequently come up in the study of Earth systems and global climate change. Students will be exposed to many problems involving unit conversion. Global climate change reports involve terms such as kilowatt-hour, megawatt-hour, and gigawatt-hour, as well as megatons and gigatons. Students will become versed in converting units where appropriate, and through the calculations, will work with the concept of significant figures. Creating linear equations from graphical and tabular information is covered, as well as forecasting. The text is meant to be used as a companion to standard Earth science and mathematics courses, and presents enough application problems to allow students to quantitatively understand typical media reports about global climate change.

The study of clouds (where they occur, their characteristics, etc) plays a key role in the understanding of climate change. This site discusses how the relative thickness and altitude of various cloud types result in their either reflecting solar radiation or transmitting and trapping it, thereby warming Earth's surface. It features text, a scientific illustration, and links to other relevant topics and datasets.

This Earth Observatory site contains data and images from NASA's Earth Observatory project. The purpose of NASA's Earth Observatory is to provide an accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth's climate and environmental change. The site is useful to public media and educators. Data and images can be obtained for a variety of subjects, the Earth's atmosphere, land, life on earth, oceans and heat and energy. Users can enter data on a variety of topics and produce animations depicting the data entered. The site also contains a helpful section explaining how to build animations and globe animations.

The Earth Observatory Glossary defines words from space science, ecology and Earth science. It is part of the NASA Earth Observatory site, which provides new satellite imagery and scientific information about Earth with a focus on climate and environmental change. The new glossary mode allows users to browse the Earth Observatory site with special terms highlighted that, when selected, will take you to the appropriate entry in the glossary.

To gain an understanding of mixtures and the concept of separation of mixtures, students use strong magnets to find the element of iron in iron-fortified breakfast cereal flakes. Through this activity, they see how the iron component of this heterogeneous mixture (cereal) retains its properties and can thus be separated by physical means.

Play ball! Add charges to the Field of Dreams and see how they react to the electric field. Turn on a background electric field and adjust the direction and magnitude. (Kevin Costner not included).

This is a hands-on lab activity about the chemical composition and conductivity of water. Working in groups, learners will: conduct an experiment involving the process of electrolysis, prepare an experiment to better understand the process of ion exchange, discuss and research the "softness" and "hardness" of water, and use the periodic table to identify elements and learn their characteristics. Background information, a glossary and more is included. Materials needed for each student group include a 9-volt battery, two electrodes (e.g. copper strips, or two #2 pencils sharpened at both ends), electrical wire and glass beakers or ceramic saucers. This activity is part of the Aquarius Hands-on Laboratory Activities.

Students gain a better understanding of the different types of materials as pure substances and mixtures and learn to distinguish between homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures by discussing an assortment of example materials they use and encounter in their daily lives.

80+ Free Science Activities to Entertain your Kids in the following areas:
BIOLOGY ACTIVITIES
EARTH SCIENCE AND ASTRONOMY ACTIVITIES
CHEMISTRY ACTIVITIES
PHYSICS ACTIVITIES
FREE SCIENCE GAME PACKETS
SCIENCE ACTIVITY ROUND-UPS
SCIENCE PLUS

The students participate in many demonstrations during the first day of this lesson to learn basic concepts related to the forms and states of energy. This knowledge is then applied the second day as they assess various everyday objects to determine what forms of energy are transformed to accomplish the object's intended task. The students use block diagrams to illustrate the form and state of energy flowing into and out of the process.

Under the "The Science Behind Harry Potter" theme, a succession of diverse complex scientific topics are presented to students through direct immersive interaction. Student interest is piqued by the incorporation of popular culture into the classroom via a series of interactive, hands-on Harry Potter/movie-themed lessons and activities. They learn about the basics of acid/base chemistry (invisible ink), genetics and trait prediction (parseltongue trait in families), and force and projectile motion (motion of the thrown remembrall). In each lesson and activity, students are also made aware of the engineering connections to these fields of scientific study.

Students are introduced to the fundamentals of environmental engineering as well as the global air, land and water quality concerns facing today's environmental engineers. After a lesson and activity to introduce environmental engineering, students learn more about water chemistry aspects of environmental engineering. Specifically, they focus on groundwater contamination and remediation, including sources of contamination, adverse health effects of contaminated drinking water, and current and new remediation techniques. Several lab activities provide hands-on experiences with topics relevant to environmental engineering concerns and technologies, including removal efficiencies of activated carbon in water filtration, measuring pH, chromatography as a physical separation method, density and miscibility.

The ocean and atmosphere each react to changes in the other. These reactions and counter-reactions can snowball until the system builds to a point where potentially disastrous effects occur, such as the El Nino events of 1982-83 and 1997-98. This site describes how the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's TOPEX-Poseidon satellite was used to monitor the amount of sea level rise in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and consequently the amount of heat stored in the water. Sea level and temperature data from TOPEX-Poseidon was used successfully to predict the 1997-98 El Nino event earlier than ever before. It features text, remotely-sensed imagery and a link to JPL's Physical Oceanography website.

Light a light bulb by waving a magnet. This demonstration of Faraday's Law shows you how to reduce your power bill at the expense of your grocery bill.

Students study an ancient bronze statue, analyze its pose, and discover how conservators remove and prevent corrosion. They learn that the bronze used to make this sculpture is an alloy of copper and tin with small amounts of antimony, lead, iron, silver, nickel, and cobalt. They use the periodic table to research the chemical formulas of compounds used to make bronze. After learning about oxidation-reduction reactions that occurred in the statue, students speculate about the conservation techniques needed to conserve the bronze sculpture.

Students study an ancient bronze statue, analyze its pose, and discover how conservators remove and prevent corrosion. They learn that the bronze used to make this sculpture is an alloy of copper and tin with small amounts of other elements. They use the periodic table to research the chemical formulas of compounds used to make bronze. Students compare conservation techniques in two ancient bronze objects.

Students conduct several simple lab activities to learn about the five fundamental load types that can act on structures: tension, compression, shear, bending and torsion. In this activity, students play the role of molecules in a beam that is subject to various loading schemes.

Learn how to make waves of all different shapes by adding up sines or cosines. Make waves in space and time and measure their wavelengths and periods. See how changing the amplitudes of different harmonics changes the waves. Compare different mathematical expressions for your waves.