This activity is a lab where students make measurements of a mass on a spring and work through appropriate calculations dealing with simple harmonic motion.

This is an interactive powerpoint lecture on the science of electricity followed by a laboratory investigation where students dissect a disposable camera.

Charge can flow through some materials, but not others. Created by David SantoPietro.

You can create your own lectures, homework, and labs around any PhET simulation by using the PhET Activity Guidelines. These guidelines will help you create "guided inquiry activities which encourage students to construct their own understanding," which are the most effective way to use PhET simulations.

Average inquiry level: Structured
In this lab, students will take on the role of a mineralogist by testing various physical properties of minerals, sorting minerals into categories with similar characteristics, and then creating a flowchart to use to identify minerals. This lab is designed for face-to-face instruction.

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Problems in nuclear engineering often involve applying knowledge from many disciplines simultaneously in achieving satisfactory solutions. The course will focus on understanding the complete nuclear reactor system including the balance of plant, support systems and resulting interdependencies affecting the overall safety of the plant and regulatory oversight. Both the Seabrook and Pilgrim nuclear plant simulators will be used as part of the educational experience to provide as realistic as possible understanding of nuclear power systems short of being at the reactor.

The MIT Nuclear Weapons Education Project aims to teach individuals, particularly those who grew up after the end of the Cold War, about what nuclear weapons are and their effects on the world. The project website provides materials for lectures or discussions at introductory course levels.

This fun Web site is part of OLogy, where kids can collect virtual trading cards and create projects with them. Here, they are introduced to astronomy. The site opens with an array of mind-boggling facts shared by the director of the museum's Hayden Planetarium. It includes a link to stargazing tips and resources and gives students an overview of gravity, the invisible pulling power at work throughout the universe.

This online game activity allows the learners to calculate their carbon footprint using a French language calculator developed by a Swiss environmental organization. Students will describe their results in French and engage in related expansion activities for the language class.

Students will construct CD hovercraft and apply Newton's laws of motion to make them work. They will also investigate how hovercraft reduce friction; learn how the technology is used in training astronauts for space missions; and design their own hovercraft competitions.

This quiz for younger students asks them 10 questions about plate motions, rock types in continental and oceanic crust, crustal formation and mountain building, the supercontinent Pangea, and the theory of continental drift. A link to a page on continental drift provides information to answer the questions.

As our 5th grade students start the shift from childhood to adolescence, it is important for them to be equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to take care of their bodies by making healthy eating choices! This unit strives to engage students in the task of crafting a healthy and delicious snack for younger students in their building. Students master Physical Science performance expectations (5-PS1-1, 5-PS1-2, 5-PS1-3, 5-PS1-4), while learning about the properties of different foods that make them healthy or not! The unit culminates with students constructing a snack for their 1st grade buddies.

In this hands-on inquiry activity, students will design and construct an apparatus that will permit an egg to survive a nine foot fall. Students are given limited materials, so they must critically think about the design and improvise strategies during the building of the apparatus

Students will investigate how collisions can change the direction and speed of an object in terms of a change in energy. This is important to understand for many sports as well as many safety issues on the road.

The egg-drop activity is designed to help students develop a deeper understanding of the force created by wind resistance and how it interacts with the force due to Gravity. Students will note how surface area affects the resistance of a falling object as Gravity works on it. Students will record and share observations and questions regarding the experiment.

Relating angular displacement to distance traveled (or arc length) for a ball traveling in a circle. Derivation of formula for arc length.

Visual understanding of how centripetal acceleration relates to velocity and radius. Created by Sal Khan.

David explains how to determine the torque exerted by a non-perpendicular force. Created by David SantoPietro.

Ohm’s Law is V = IR, where V = voltage, I = current, and R = resistance. Ohm’s Law allows you to determine characteristics of a circuit, such as how much current is flowing through it, if you know the voltage of the battery in the circuit and how much resistance is in the circuit. Created by Sal Khan.