David explains what beat frequency means, how to find it, and solves a sample problem involving beat frequency. Created by David SantoPietro.
This video segment describes how the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy could have been fossilized. Footage courtesy of NOVA: "In Search of Human Origins."
When you spin it around, this toy sounds like a swarm of buzzing bees.
Teach students about P-waves and S-waves by having them model them with their own bodies.
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Students learn about material properties, and that engineers must consider many different materials properties when designing. This activity focuses on strength-to-weight ratios and how sometimes the strongest material is not always the best material.
Explore bending of light between two media with different indices of refraction. See how changing from air to water to glass changes the bending angle. Play with prisms of different shapes and make rainbows.
This activity will allow students to see light bending. The students will be able to calculate the amount of bend or refraction that occurs with various mediums.
In this optics activity, learners discover that when they rotate a special black and white pattern called a Benham's Disk, it produces the illusion of colored rings. Learners experiment with the speed of rotation and direction of rotation to observe varying patterns. Use this activity to explain to learners how our eyes detect color and how different color receptors in the eye respond at different rates.
Demonstrate the Bernoulli Principle using simple materials on a small or large scale. This resource includes two activities that allow learners to experience the Bernoulli Principle, in which an object is suspended in air by blowing down on it. Use this activity to explain how atomizers work and why windows are sometimes sucked out of their frames as two trains rush past each other.
Demonstrate Bernoulli's Principle using balloons and and pop cans. Real world concept of lift can be applied to an airplane demonstration.
Bernoulli's principle relates the pressure of a fluid to its elevation and its speed. Bernoulli's equation can be used to approximate these parameters in water, air or any fluid that has very low viscosity. Students learn about the relationships between the components of the Bernoulli equation through real-life engineering examples and practice problems.
This is the first of two videos where Sal derives Bernoulli's equation. Created by Sal Khan.
This is the second of two videos where Sal derives Bernoulli's equation. In the second half of the video Sal also begins an example problem where liquid exits a hole in a container. Created by Sal Khan.
Students use the scientific method to determine the effect of control surfaces on a paper glider. They construct paper airplanes (model gliders) and test their performance to determine the base characteristics of the planes. Then they change one of the control surfaces and compare the results to their base glider in order to determine the cause and effect relationship of the control surfaces.
This Cyberchase video segment features Bianca, who must figure out the fastest route to a movie premiere.
In this activity, a spinning bicycle wheel resists efforts to tilt it and point the axle in a new direction. Learners use the bicycle wheel like a giant gyroscope to explore angular momentum and torque. Learners can participate in the assembly of the Bicycle Wheel Gyro or use a preassembled unit to explore these concepts and go for an unexpected spin!
In this activity students work through a binary eutectic phase diagram in small groups and try to determine a set of generalizations that explain the behavior of such systems (e.g., "the first liquid produced upon heating is always the eutectic composition").
(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)
This course covers sensing and measurement for quantitative molecular/cell/tissue analysis, in terms of genetic, biochemical, and biophysical properties. Methods include light and fluorescence microscopies; electro-mechanical probes such as atomic force microscopy, laser and magnetic traps, and MEMS devices; and the application of statistics, probability and noise analysis to experimental data. Enrollment preference is given to juniors and seniors.
A free online textbook for biophysical chemistry. The book covers probability, statistics, thermodynamics, kinetics, Monte Carlo methods, biochemistry, diffusion, stochastic processes, and others.
This lesson begins with a demonstration prompting students to consider how current generates a magnetic field and the direction of the field that is generated. Through formal lecture, students learn Biot-Savart's law in order to calculate, most simply, the magnetic field produced in the center of a circular current carrying loop. For applications, students find it is necessary to integrate the field produced over all small segments in an actual current carrying wire.