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Convection, Conduction Radiation Thermal Energy Transfer Lab

In this Earth Science or Physical Science lab, students will gain an understanding of the three types of thermal energy transfer: conduction, radiation, and convection. Students will use hot, cold, and room temperature water to demonstrate convection by using food coloring. Students will then see how long chocolate chips take to melt when you add heat to just one side of some tin foil. Finally, they will use heat lamps, thermometers, and dark and light-colored papers to demonstrate radiation and the absorption of radiated heat.

Copper Penny Oxidation Lab

In this lab students design and experiment that will oxidize a penny. The purpose of this lab besides demonstrating chemical weathering is to assess how well students are understanding the scientific method as well as their ability to think outside the box by taking content knowledge and applying it in a lab situation. I stand back from this lab to see how well students perform. Students will observe their pennies each day until their pennies are dry or for 3 or more days, depending on how they set up their design.

Current USGS Significant Worldwide Earthquake Investigation

In this Earth Science Earthquake activity, students will explore the USGS current earthquake website. Students will understand what is to be found on the USGS Earthquake website. They will discover how many earthquakes have occurred recently. Students will gain an understanding of what the Mercalli Intensity Scale is used for. Students will discover the 5 largest recent earthquakes that have occurred around the world. They will gain a better understanding of geography as well by using maps and map scales to determine distances from an earthquake epicenter.

Cave Formations and Information Investigation Activity

In this assignment students will find images of the most common formations found in caves: helictites, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, cave popcorn, soda straws, draperies, cave bacon, columns, and boxwork They will be assigned a specific cave from a list of 18 and answer 8 out of many questions about the cave. Students get to choose the open-ended questions from a list or create their own questions. This assignment is designed to generate interest in visiting the many caves throughout the world. Many of the caves in the list are found right here in the United States.

Commutative Property of Addition Using Skittles

Generate equivalent expressions using two additive properties. This video focuses on using the associative and commutative properties of addition to combine like terms, simplify expressions, and create equivalent expressions.  Change the sign to multiplication and you can use this for the properties of multiplication as well.

Watch the properties of addition and multiplication in action.

Bill Nye-The Joy of Discovery

Bill Nye said that the Joy of Discovery is awesome.  It is the joy of discovery that makes every human being a scientist.  We explore, test, hypothesize ,and form conclusions.  Watch this video with your students to see if they agree with what was said.  The images and videos attached to this video are beautiful.

Alzheimer's Disease Video

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, affecting over 40 million people worldwide. And though it was discovered over a century ago, scientists are still grappling for a cure. This video describes how Alzheimer's affects the brain, shedding light on the different stages of this complicated, destructive disease.

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