Discover Physics is a conceptual physics textbook intended for students in a nonmathematical one-semester general-education course.
With a simple demonstration activity, students are introduced to the concept of friction as a force that impedes motion when two surfaces are in contact. Then, in the Associated Activity (Sliding and Stuttering), they work in teams to use a spring scale to drag an object such as a ceramic coffee cup along a table top or the floor. The spring scale allows them to measure the frictional force that exists between the moving cup and the surface it slides on. By modifying the bottom surface of the cup, students can find out what kinds of surfaces generate more or less friction. They also discover that both static and kinetic friction are involved when an object initially at rest is caused to slide across a surface.
This is an activity about the periodicity of the solar cycle. Learners will calculate the number of M-class solar flares as a percentage of the total number of X-ray solar flares and graph these results as a function of time. When compared to a graph of the number of sunspots as a function of time, learners make conclusions about the period of the solar cycle. This activity uses data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES).
In this lesson, students will learn how cosmic rays were discovered and what they are - including their size and speed. Includes background information for the teacher, questions, activities and information about student preconceptions. This is lesson 1 of 4 from "The Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER)."
The students will be able to identify questions and concepts that guide scientific investigations, recognize and analyze alternative explanations and models by the end of this activity.
Find information, tools and facts about symptoms, risks and how to prevent, treat and manage human diseases and illnesses.
Students demonstrate the erythrocyte sedimentation rate test (ESR test) using a blood model composed of tomato juice, petroleum jelly and olive oil. They simulate different disease conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, anemia, leukocytosis and sickle-cell anemia, by making appropriate variations in the particle as well as in the fluid matrix. Students measure the ESR for each sample blood model, correlate the ESR values with disease conditions and confirm that diseases alter blood composition and properties. During the activity, students learn that when non-coagulated blood is let to stand in a tube, the red blood cells separate and fall to the bottom of the tube, resulting in a sediment and a clear liquid called serum. The height in millimeters of the clear liquid on top of the sediment in a time period of one hour is taken as the sedimentation rate. If a disease is present, this ESR value deviates from the normal, disease-free value. Different diseases cause different ESR values because blood composition and properties, such as density and viscosity, are altered differently by different diseases. Thus, the ESR test serves as a real-world diagnostic screening test to identify indications of the presence of any diseases in people.
This is an activity about the Hubble Deep Field image, an observation of one small area of sky that contained no previously-detected objects. The long time exposure of this image allows us to detect some of the most distant objects seen in our Universe. Learners will view an image of the Hubble Deep Field and identify how many distant galaxies are visible as well as the types of galaxies they might be. Observations will be taken a step further to infer predominant age of a galaxy and determine if there are any trends in age (color) versus galaxy size or type and, ultimately, if the distant Universe appears relatively uniform. This activity is Astronomy Activity 4 in a larger resource, titled "Space Update."
The Issue: How should the land around water systems be used?
Imagine you live in a town near a lake in Saskatchewan. For drinking water, the town uses
ground water from a local well. The ground water comes from an aquifer that sits below land
that is being developed for a feedlot.
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Educational playlists are selections of films on themes that tie in with Canadian curricula and address the important issues of the day. Many of the playlists are also linked to our study guides
Classification: DL6.2 Examine how humans organize understanding of the diversity of living things.
Characteristics and Behaviours: DL6.3 Analyze the characteristics and behaviours of vertebrates (i.e., mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and invertebrates.
Adaptations: DL6.4 Examine and describe structures and behaviours that help individual living organisms survive in their environments in the short term and species of living organisms adapt to their environments in the long term.
In this unit of study students learn about diversity of life by focusing on bats. They will learn about their habitat, structures and functions, and behaviors. This unit integrates nine STEM attributes and was developed as part of the South Metro-Salem STEM Partnership's Teacher Leadership Team. Any instructional materials are included within this unit of study.
The tutorial that the "DjangoGirls" initiative is using for all of its workshops. It's a very beginner-friendly tutorial with introductions to the command line, Python, Django, HTML and CSS. No previous programming experience is required.
Once participants have finished the tutorial, they will have a small working web application: their own blog. The tutorial will show them how to put it online, so others will see their work.
The tutorial is available in English, French, Chinese and Ukrainian. "beta" versions of translations to other languages are also available. (The English version is considered the "original" and is usually the most maintained, complete and up-to-date one.)
In this activity, students will test whether the color of a material affects how much heat it absorbs.
Through a teacher-led discussion, students realize that the food energy plants obtain comes from sunlight via the plant process of photosynthesis. They learn what photosynthesis is, at an age-appropriate level of detail and vocabulary, and then begin to question how we know that photosynthesis occurs, if we can't see it happening. Elodea is a common water plant that students can use to directly observe evidence of photosynthesis. When Elodea is placed in a glass beaker near a good light source, bubbles of oxygen will be released as products of photosynthesis. By counting the number of bubbles that rise to the surface in a five-minute period, students can compare the photosynthetic activity of Elodea in the presence of high and low light levels.
Students learn about the amazing adaptations of the ptarmigan to the alpine tundra. They focus one adaptation, the feathered feet of the ptarmigan, and ask whether the feathers serve to only keep the feet warm or to also provide the bird with floatation capability. They create model ptarmigan feet, with and without feathers, and test the hypothesis on the function of the feathers. Ultimately, students make a claim about whether the feathers provide floatation and support this claim with their testing evidence.
Students learn about biomimicry and the engineering design process as they design and build model ptarmigan feet.
In this activity, students squeeze a tennis ball to demonstrate the strength of the human heart. Working in teams, they think of ways to keep the heart beating if the natural mechanism were to fail. The goal of this activity is to get students to understand the strength and resilience of the heart.
Students explore the concept of optical character recognition (OCR) in a problem-solving environment. They research OCR and OCR techniques and then apply those methods to the design challenge by developing algorithms capable of correctly "reading" a number on a typical high school sports scoreboard. Students use the structure of the engineering design process to guide them to develop successful algorithms. In the associated activity, student groups implement, test and revise their algorithms. This software design lesson/activity set is designed to be part of a Java programming class.