While working in groups to facilitate peer tutoring, students manipulate a hands-on, physical model to better comprehend several characteristics of subduction zone earthquakes.

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This activity helps the students to visualize the effects of temperature and salinity on water density, and the resulting thermohaline circulation. Important processes visualized in this demonstration are upwelling, downwelling, and the formation of haloclines, thermoclines and pycnoclines. In addition, mixing by advection is clearly demonstrated.

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This ILD helps students to understand the relationship between total revenue and price elasticity of demand.

Students predict the best graphical representation of US real GDP/capita during the last twenty years, choosing from graphs showing: cyclical decline, cyclical change with no net change, cyclical increase, or erratic wide fluctuations. Using actual US data, students graph real GDP/capita to find out the actual pattern: a rising series with periodic dips, not a flat series, a falling series, or a highly erratic series as students often predict. Students then reflect on why this pattern is often misunderstood and why it may not fully describe the well-being of the US population.

This activity is a classroom activity in which students see the difference between vectors and scalars and learn how to graphically add vectors.

This activity uses an Interactive Lecture Demonstration to help students understand the definition of money in a modern economy. Starting with the common misconception that money is coins and currency, the activity challenges this belief through a survey of student assets. Students reflect on ways in which the survey changed their understanding and consider why misconceptions about money are so common by watching videos of well-educated adults misunderstanding money.

This inteactive lecture and series of demonstrations develops the concepts and vocabulary of oscillatory motion as it relates to the motion of a mass on a spring.

This series of questions before instruction, in-class peer instruction as students come to understanding, and visualization of an important mathematical relationship allow students to iterate and improve their understanding of work incrementally.

In this unit, students investigate water from a global perspective. The focus of students learning is on the identification of storehouses where Earth's water is stored, how matter (water) cycles through the geosphere (lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere) and biosphere, and the energy associated with water as it changes between a solid, liquid and gas state. The unit investigations conclude with a short homework assignment on the application of the hydrologic cycle from a regional perspective as you research the quality and availability of fresh water in the state where you live. An important factor is the consideration for the percentage of fresh water that is readily available for human consumption and the impact of human activity on the quality of the water.

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In this unit, students examine the interaction between the hydrologic cycle and rock cycle through exploring the processes of weathering, erosion, transport and deposition of sediments both in real stream systems and in a physical, table-top model of a stream. This activity focuses group thinking on: 1) identification and interpretation of patterns that define physical characteristics associated with three distinct areas of a river system and 2) the type of energy transfers that occur as sediments are eroded, transported and deposited.

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Students gain an intuitive understanding of strain and deformation through a series of physical model activities using everyday materials such as bungee cords, rubber bands, fabric, index cards, silly putty, sand, and more. Can be run to fill an entire lab session exploring multiple materials or as a shorter exercise using just rubber bands and stretchy fabric. An addendum provides mathematical content (vectors, matrices, multidimensional strain) that can be used by instructors interested in building student quantitative skills.

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Not online recommended: Exercise uses variety of physical models that would be hard to duplicate at home. The first part of the "basic" version of the exercise (as opposed to "extended") does use rubber bands and could potentially be done remotely.

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In a hands-on exploration, students will learn to describe and quantify the porosity and permeability of soil models representative of both agricultural and natural environments. Students will use this information to relate the effects of various agricultural methods on soil porosity and permeability in an exercise that requires modeling the role of a soil assessment expert. Instructors are provided with directions for collecting or assembling simple soil models.

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Using Lab Measurements to determine the power output of a solar module and the economic feasibility of photovoltaic panels

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Students are challenged to a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery in which they construct their own decay curves of melting ice to determine time-zero.

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Compare lifting a bowling ball directly (one small person) to lifting a bowling ball at an angle with two people holding the ends of a rope and the ball hooked to the middle of the rope.

This resource contains demonstrations used to illustrate the theory and applications of lasers and optics. A detailed listing of the topics can be found below.
Lasers today are being used in an ever-increasing number of applications. In fact, there is hardly a field that has not been touched by the laser. Lasers are playing key roles in the home, office, hospital, factory, outdoors, and theater, as well as in the laboratory.
To learn about lasers and related optics, one usually takes a course or two, or acquires the necessary information from books and journal articles. To make this learning more vivid and more exciting, and, one hopes, more understandable, one needs to see some of the basic phenomena involved. To fill this need, Professor Ezekiel has videotaped 48 demonstrations that illustrate most of the fundamental phenomena relating to lasers and physical optics.
By using split-screen inserts and a wide range of video-recording capabilities, it is possible to show real-time effects in lasers and optics with the simultaneous manipulation of the components that cause these effects. In this way, one can see effects in close up that would be difficult, if not impossible, to display in front of an audience or in the classroom.
These video demonstrations are designed for:

The individual student of lasers and optics who wants to observe the various phenomena covered in theoretical treatments in courses, books, and technical papers.
The Instructor in lasers and optics in a company, university, college, or high school who wants to illustrate, in class, many of the fundamental phenomena in optics and lasers.

These videos were produced by the MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study.

This activity provides students with a first look at water tension and its role in the life of a water strider.

This activity provides students with a first look at water tension and its role in the life of a water strider.

After discussing weathering and erosion in class, students are asked to do a small amount of research on different types of chemical weathering, physical weathering, and erosion processes (mostly out of their textbook). Outside of class students then dirty at least four similar dishes with the same type, thickness and aerial extent of food, preferably baked on to ensure maximum stick. One dish is set aside as a control (no weathering or erosion will occur for that dish). For each of the remaining three dishes, students devise an experiment that mimics some sort of chemical weathering, physical weathering, or erosion process (freeze/thaw, sand abrasion, oxidation, etc.). Prior to the experiments, the thickness of food is measured. Experiments are timed, and at the end of the experiment each plate is turned over to determine how much which method removed the greatest aerial extent of food. Experimental results are compared to the control plate to determine the actual effectiveness. Erosion/weathering rates are determined by dividing the thickness of food removed by the experimental time. Students then calculate how long it would take to remove a pile of food the size of the Geology building (assume a 50 m radius sphere), and to remove an amount of food equivalent to the depth of the Grand Canyon. Students then compare these results to rock erosion and weathering rates, performing similar calculations using these "real" rates (see the full project description for details). Photos of each step and the scientists are encouraged in their 2-3 page writeup.

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