This inquiry lab activity involves students working to understand that sound is made from vibrations.

Students use miniature explosives to analyze actions and reactions. An Alka-seltzer tablet is sealed in a small film canister with water which sets up a pressure explosion pushing the canister one direction and an adjacent film canister in the opposite direction. Students repeat this set up but vary the mass of the second canister by adding sand. The distances that each canister travels is measured, recorded and later analyzed and discussed.

This is a field investigation where students experience Newton's 3rd law of motion.

This activity s a student project to construct and test the load bearing capacity of a scale model bridge from toothpicks.

How to solve for the horizontal displacement when the projectile starts with a horizontal initial velocity. We also explain common mistakes people make when doing horizontally launched projectile problems. Created by David SantoPietro.

Amplitude, period, frequency and wavelength of periodic waves. How to calculate wave velocity. Created by Sal Khan.

This activity is an extension of the FOSS Variables Lifeboat investigation. Students choose a lifeboats variable to investigate, write up an experiment based on the variable to be tested, test the variable, and create a lifeboats investigation poster to share their results.

These flow charts show carbon dioxide emissions for each state, the District of Columbia and the entire United States. Emissions are distinguished by energy source and end use.

This course will begin with brief overview of what important current research topics are in oceanography (physical, geological, and biological) and how acoustics can be used as a tool to address them. Three typical examples are climate, bottom geology, and marine mammal behavior. Will then address the acoustic inverse problem, reviewing inverse methods (linear and nonlinear) and the combination of acoustical methods with other measurements as an integrated system. Last part of course will concentrate on specific case studies, taken from current research journals. This course is taught on campus at MIT and with simultaneous video at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Let’s make Cheetos!  In this food science unit, students walk through careers in the food industry, sensory analysis of food, the formulation of a product, branding and marketing of a food product, and finally making physical product of fried cheese puffs. Written by Tyler Schindler

This was my inquiry based project. It focuses on how the pollution problem in the Chesapeake Bay can be solved. This resource includes the driving question, grabber, and culminating activity.

Effective measurement techniques include the concept of measurement uncertainty. Students may make erroneous conclusions analyzing data using measurements that do not include the uncertainty of the measurement. In this lab, students determine a density range for a metal and identify the material based on this range.

This is a lab activity that allows students to collect data to practice using effective measurement. While other authors have produced similar labs, this version includes uncertainty analysis consistent with effective measurement technique as presented in the module Measurement and Uncertainty.

Learners will build an open spectrograph to calculate the angle the light is transmitted through a holographic diffraction grating. After finding the desired angles, the students will design their own spectrograph using the information learned. 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 30 minute activity engages students in ordering and spacing geologic history events on a meter stick. Students engage in an inquiry cycle, individually first, then with a partner before receiving feedback on their model. This process scaffolds their temporal reasoning of the vastness of geologic time.

Labs and tutorials that use equipment such as circuits can be modified to use PhET simulations instead. Research shows that substituting the PhET Circuit Construction Kit simulation for real equipment in a variety of contexts leads to improved conceptual learning in the best cases, and the same conceptual learning in the worst cases. There are many advantages to using PhET simulations over real equipment: They are easy to use, so students can play around and modify the experiment quickly and easily without fear of breaking the equipment. They have productive constraints to focus attention on the most important aspects of the experiment (e.g. bulb brightness and current flow) rather than on irrelevant aspects (e.g. wire color and length). Finally, if real equipment is not available, PhET simulations provide the opportunity to do multiple experiments with a single piece of equipment: a computer.

This activity involves students in recording their energy usage of particular appliances and devices over a certain period of time. They then take the time and device and determine the kilowatts of electricity used via an internet website. They then can take this value and calculate the amount of fuel that would have to be burned to generate this same amount of electricity. This activity is done for multiple appliances and situations and it is investigated how much fuel/coal is needed to kepp the light on all day every day, or the computer that is never in sleep mode.

Sal defines and compares tension, weight, friction and normal forces using free body diagrams.

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.