What happens when sugar and salt are added to water? Pour in sugar, shake in salt, and evaporate water to see the effects on concentration and conductivity. Zoom in to see how different sugar and salt compounds dissolve. Zoom in again to explore the role of water.

Simple budgets may be used to estimate the exchange of water in embayments that capitalize on the concept of steady state and conservation principals. This is especially true for bays that experience a significant exchange of freshwater. This exchange of freshwater may reduce the average salt concentration in the bay compared to seawater if it involves addition of freshwater from rivers, R, and/or precipitation, P. Alternatively, it may increase the average salt concentration in the bay compared to seawater if there is relatively little river input and high evaporation, E. Since freshwater input changes the salt concentration in the bay, and salt is a conservative material, it is possible to combine two steady state budgets for a bay, one for salt and one for water, to solve for the magnitude of the water flows that enter and exit the bay mouth.
Students will make actual calculations for the inflow and outflow of water to Puget Sound, Washington and the Mediterranean Sea and compare them to actual measured values.

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This is a comprehensive project using the Highland Road Park Observatory camera. This project encompasses the formal portions for both written and spoken communication, and carries 55% of the course credit.

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Wetlands have come under significant pressure in recent decades, resulting in the loss of many wet ecosystems around the world and across climatic zones. Despite this loss, wetlands have received significantly less attention than other ecosystems such as forests or coral reefs, resulting in a lack of public awareness. Wetland ecosystems currently provide livelihoods to more than one billion people, support up to 40% of all species, and act as large carbon stores. This poster illustrates the underlying causes for the decline in wetlands, the resulting consequences for physical and social systems as well as possible solutions to this problem.

Short Description:
This text is a presentation of how and why children grow, develop, and learn. We will look at how we change physically over time from conception through middle childhood. We examine cognitive change, or how our ability to think and remember changes over the first few stages of life. And finally, we will look at how our emotions, psychological state, and social relationships change throughout childhood.

Word Count: 105564

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(This case study was added to OER Commons as one of a batch of over 700. It has relevant information which may include medical imagery, lab results, and history where relevant. A link to the final diagnosis can be found at the end of the case study for review. The first paragraph of the case study -- typically, but not always the clinical presentation -- is provided below.)

A 15-year-old girl presented to our institution with headache, vomiting, and nausea of 3-week duration. Physical examination showed no focal neurologic deficits. The patient's past medical, surgical, and family histories were all noncontributory.

This activity is a classroom investigation where the students create, in size and distance, a solar system model in proportion to a selected sphere representing the earth.

This is a book containing over 200 problems spanning over 70 specific topic areas covered in a typical Algebra II course. Learners can encounter a selection of application problems featuring astronomy, earth science and space exploration, often with more than one example in a specific category. Learners will use mathematics to explore science topics related to a wide variety of NASA science and space exploration endeavors. Each problem or problem set is introduced with a brief paragraph about the underlying science, written in a simplified, non-technical jargon where possible. Problems are often presented as a multi-step or multi-part activities. This book can be found on the Space Math@NASA website.

Explore the forces at work when you try to push a filing cabinet. Create an applied force and see the resulting friction force and total force acting on the cabinet. Charts show the forces, position, velocity, and acceleration vs. time. View a Free Body Diagram of all the forces (including gravitational and normal forces).

Students use LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robotics to help conceptualize and understand the force of friction. Specifically, they observe how different surfaces in contact result in different frictional forces. A LEGO robot is constructed to pull a two-wheeled trailer made of LEGO parts. The robot is programmed to pull the trailer 10 feet and trial runs are conducted on smooth and textured surfaces. The speed and motor power of the robot is kept constant in all trials so students observe the effect of friction between various combinations of surfaces and trailer wheels. To apply what they learn, students act as engineers and create the most effective car by designing the most optimal tires for given surface conditions.

In this video segment adapted from NASA, students in Matsuyama City, Japan, interview Expedition 8 Commander and NASA Science Officer Mike Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri about life and work aboard the International Space Station.

This video is an introduction to the global issue of water. It examines questions like "How can there be a water shortage when we are surrounded by water?". This video is part of the Sustainability Learning Suites, made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. See 'Learn more about this resource' for Learning Objectives and Activities.

This video looks at how water use and energy use are connected when industrial era technologies are used as the primary means of supplying process energy. This video is part of the Sustainability Learning Suites, made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. See 'Learn more about this resource' for Learning Objectives and Activities.

Students explore material properties in hands-on and visually evident ways via the Archimedes' principle. First, they design and conduct an experiment to calculate densities of various materials and present their findings to the class. Using this information, they identify an unknown material based on its density. Then, groups explore buoyant forces. They measure displacement needed for various materials to float on water and construct the equation for buoyancy. Using this equation, they calculate the numerical solution for a boat hull using given design parameters.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, learn about engineering innovations that could help detect a bridge's structural weaknesses before they become dangerous.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientists are on the hunt for tornadoes. Using Doppler radar, they gather data in the hopes of solving the mystery of how tornadoes form.

This video segment adapted from the Space Telescope Science Institute shows what the Hubble telescope found when it stared at a single, nearly empty spot in the sky for 10 days in 1995. The unexpected result was a picture of a multitude of galaxies stretching into the distance.

This interactive resource adapted from the National Park Service describes the many forces that affect shorelines, including tides, weathering, erosion, and deposition.

Global temperatures continue to be affected by the combustion of fossil fuels and the subsequent release of carbon dioxide. This 3-week unit is designed to give 9th grade physical science or environmental science student an introduction to climate change, how humans are influencing it, and what efforts we can make to help limit or prevent it. Topics necessary for this unit include electricity, circuits, greenhouse gases, alternative energies, embodied energy, payback period, and life cycle assessments. This unit functions as a culminating project incorporating all of the topics listed above and challenges students to conduct research, engineer their own alternative energy solutions and prove their efficiency through calculation. Individually or in pairs students must pick an alternative energy, spend a day or more researching it, a day drawing a blueprint for it and creating a materials list, two or three days building model “power plants” to light 3 LEDs, and two to three days writing summary research papers. The quantitative analysis of their models (included in their research papers) and student’s ability to prove their models environmental superiority over fossil fuels will be weighted heavily.

Corals, like other living animals, require a particular range of environmental conditions to survive. In this lab, students examine sea surface temperature, depth, salinity, and aragonite saturation data to discover coral reefs' favored environments.

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