This subject introduces the history of science from antiquity to the present. Students consider the impact of philosophy, art, magic, social structure, and folk knowledge on the development of what has come to be called “science” in the Western tradition, including those fields today designated as physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, astronomy and the mind sciences. Topics include concepts of matter, nature, motion, body, heavens, and mind as these have been shaped over the course of history. Students read original works by Aristotle, Vesalius, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, among others.

In this activity, students are introduced to the concept of remote sensing. In the course of this experiment, students will investigate heat conduction on two surfaces and understand the application of these techniques to spacecraft investigations of surfaces in the solar system. Materials required for the outdoor demonstration include a cement step, sand, laboratory thermometers, foam rubber, and a meter stick. An optional indoor experimental set up uses twin desk lamps with equal-wattage tungsten bulbs and an infrared thermometer. A student datasheet accompanies the activity. This resource is from PUMAS - Practical Uses of Math and Science - a collection of brief examples created by scientists and engineers showing how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes have real world applications.

This resource explores the cultural context of scientific inquiry through an interdisciplinary lens. Undergraduate students are invited to follow two characters from William Shakespeare’s play King Lear who debate the cosmos with various scientists from the 17th – 20th centuries, including Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Marie Curie. The joined scientific / literary lens models how intellectual questions about knowledge and analysis often draw from interrelated traditions of thought and practice, and asks students to consider the nature of their own intellectual questions. The resource is broken into five brief modules and can be completed entirely in class, or in partial increments as take-home.

In this activity, learners build a simple mechanism that regulates the "escape" of energy released by a falling weight by portioning it into discrete amounts. Escapements are found in mechanical clocks, such as those driven by a pendulum or a spring. Learners will build the wrapping form of escapement said to be used in a fifteenth-century German clock.

The purpose of this resource is to investigate the center pixel of a homogeneous land Cover Site in order to understand that individual land areas are part of a larger land system.

In this activity, students build a basic understanding of how a sling psychrometer is used to determine relative humidity and learn how to read a chart to determine this relationship. In addition, the student will become familiar with the concept of dew point. Materials need to conduct the investigation include two thermometers, a wooden dowel, wood screw, two washers, a section of plastic straw, and a hollow shoelace. The resource includes background information, teaching tips and questions to guide student discussion. This is chapter 11 of Meteorology: An Educator's Resource for Inquiry-Based Learning for Grades 5-9. The guide includes a discussion of learning science, the use of inquiry in the classroom, instructions for making simple weather instruments, and more than 20 weather investigations ranging from teacher-centered to guided and open inquiry investigations.

This video provides step-by-step instructions for collecting soil samples in the field, and for analyzing and storing soil samples in the lab. Procedures for determining the bulk density, particle density, particle size distribution, fertility, and pH of a soil are demonstrated. The resource includes a video and a written transcript, and is supported by the Soil Characterization, Lab Measurement Protocols in the GLOBE Teacher Guide. This is one of five videos about soils in the 24-part instructional video series describing scientific protocols used by GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment) a worldwide, hands-on, K-12 school-based science education program.

This is a reading associated with activities during Solar Week, a twice-yearly event in March and October during which classrooms are able to interact with scientists studying the Sun. Outside of Solar Week, information, activities, and resources are archived and available online at any time. This is a blog entry about the process by which rocket payloads are assembled prior to launch. It was written by one of the female team members associated with a NASA sounding rocket launch program. The blog entry reading is scheduled to occur during Friday of Solar Week.

This collection of activities is based on a weekly series of space science mathematics problems distributed during the 2012-2013 school year. They were intended for students looking for additional challenges in the math and physical science curriculum in grades 5 through 12. The problems were created to be authentic glimpses of modern science and engineering issues, often involving actual research data. The problems were designed to be one-pagers with a Teacher’s Guide and Answer Key as a second page.

This site provides fun activities for children to do and make, while they learn about space and Earth science, and the technology that enables science. The Teachers Corner on the WWW site contains curriculum supplements originally published in the ITEA (International Technology Education Association) Technology Transfer Teacher magazine.

On this webpage, learners will read fun facts about Pluto and explore why it is no longer considered a planet.

This is a lesson about using light to identify the composition of an object. Learners will use a spectrograph to gather data about light sources. Using the data they’ve collected, students are able to make comparisons between different light sources and make conjectures about the composition of a mystery light source. 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.

This video segment adapted from Shedding Light on Science uses historical illustrations and everyday examples to show that light has a speed and does not travel instantaneously.

This activity is about the use of remote sensing in planetary exploration. Learners will find out how human curiosity in planetary exploration results in science questions, engineering solutions, and teamwork. This activity demonstrates how planetary features are discovered by the use of remote-sensing techniques. Students will experience the different phases in planetary exploration, including telescope observations, fly by missions, orbiters, landers, rovers, and their own ideas about human exploration. The lesson models scientific inquiry using the 5E instructional model and includes teacher notes, prerequisite concepts and vocabulary.

This OER explores the basic operations of a Sundial. It contains both an activity as well as resources for further exploration. It is a product of the OU Academy of the Lynx, developed in conjunction with the Galileo's World Exhibition at the University of Oklahoma.

This series of ten lessons has been developed to teach students about local and global water issues. They are based on NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission. The activities are done largely outdoors and include scientific data collection and analysis and integrate technology. Many of the lessons involve data collected based on protocols from the GLOBE Program. Each lesson is designed to take one hour; the lessons build on each other, but can also be used independently. Each lesson topic includes a lesson plan, PowerPoint presentation, student capture sheet and capture sheet answer guide.

This article describes an approach designed to decrease math anxiety and teach students about the use of mathematical symbols simplifying radicals. A deck of cards is used in a demonstration, and a problem set using real life examples to master the use of radicals is included. This resource is from PUMAS - Practical Uses of Math and Science - a collection of brief examples created by scientists and engineers showing how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes have real world applications.

This is an online set of information about astronomical alignments of ancient structures and buildings. Learners will read background information about the alignments to the Sun in such structures as the Great Pyramid, Chichen Itza, and others. Next, the site contains 10 short problem sets that involve a variety of math skills, including determining the scale of a photo, measuring and drawing angles, plotting data on a graph, and creating an equation to match a set of data. Each set of problems is contained on one page and all of the sets utilize real-world problems relating to astronomical alignments of ancient structures. Each problem set is flexible and can be used on its own, together with other sets, or together with related lessons and materials selected by the educator. This was originally included as a folder insert for the 2010 Sun-Earth Day.

In this activity, student teams design and conduct a scientific investigation in which they explore the conditions necessary for life. They conduct observations of environmental conditions both indoor and outdoor, and determine the range of variation they see. They compare these data with published temperature data for Earth, Mars, Pluto and Venus. The activity supports inquiry into the real world challenge of searching for life in extreme environments. The resource includes several student data sheets, data table and images, and a teacher's guide. Materials needed for this activity include weather instruments (e.g., thermometers, barometers, anemometers). This is Activity A of two activities in the first module, titled "Temperature variations and habitability," of the resource, "Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate?" The course aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.

In this activity, student teams create a knowledge map of the essential characteristics or factors of a planet with a habitable climate, identifying range of inputs, outputs and variables of a planetary environmental system. Identified characteristics are compared to extreme environments on Earth, such as the Antarctic or the Sahara desert, and are used to consider the real life challenge of searching for life in extreme environments. The resource includes a student data sheet, questions, teacher's guide and scoring rubric. This is Activity B of two activities in the first module, titled "Temperature variations and habitability," of the resource, Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The course aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.