This learning experience introduces participants to scientific inquiry, hypothesis formation, experimental design, data analysis, and interpretation.

Using Avida-ED freeware, students control a few factors in an environment populated with digital organisms, and then compare how changing these factors affects population growth. They experiment by altering the environment size (similar to what is called carrying capacity, the maximum population size that an environment can normally sustain), the initial organism gestation rate, and the availability of resources. How systems function often depends on many different factors. By altering these factors one at a time, and observing the results, students are able to clearly see the effect of each one.

This lesson is the second of two that explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. In the first lesson, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in yeast-molasses cultures. Based on questions that arose during the first lesson and its associated activity, in this lesson students work in small groups to design experiments that will determine how environmental factors affect yeast population growth.

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students work with salmon-trace streambed data to study whether removal of a spawning run barrier was effective

In this field lab students will go outside and observe a particular area of the schoolyard. Students will design investigations to complete outside and will use outdoor observations to provide evidence for our indoor activities.

This activity is a classroom and field activity where students learn about and practice scientific observations in the classroom and then complete a field activity by making and recording scientific observations on school grounds.

In this field investigation, students will identify and determine the population size of snails in an aquatic environment.

Echolocation is the ability to orient by transmitting sound and receiving echoes from objects in the environment. As a result of a Marco-Polo type activity and subsequent lesson, students learn basic concepts of echolocation. They use these concepts to understand how dolphins use echolocation to locate prey, escape predators, navigate their environment, such as avoiding gillnets set by commercial fishing vessels. Students will also learn that dolphin sounds are vibrations created by vocal organs, and that sound is a type of wave or signal that carries energy and information especially in the dolphin's case. Students will learn that a dolphin's sense of hearing is highly enhanced and better than that of human hearing. Students will also be introduced to the concept of by-catch Students will learn what happens to animals caught through by-catch and why.

Many people do not like spiders and consider them pests. However, spiders provide a service to humans. They eat many of the insects that bother people. In this 7th grade life science activity, students will study 4-6 spider webs and discover what and how much spiders eat. They will identify the spiders building the webs, collect data and make observations related to the webs and what the spiders eat. They will use the information to develop a conclusion.

Students are introduced to an engineering challenge in which they are given a job assignment to separate three types of apples. However, they are unable to see the color differences between the apples, and as a result, they must think as engineers to design devices that can be used to help them distinguish the apples from one another. Solving the challenge depends on an understanding of wave properties and the biology of sight. After being introduced to the challenge, students form ideas and brainstorm about what background knowledge is required to solve the challenge. A class discussion produces student ideas that can be grouped into broad subject categories: waves and wave properties, light and the electromagnetic spectrum, and the structure of the eye.

In this ecology investigation, students will build and place rock baskets to collect benthic macroinvertebrates in a local waterway. They will observe and identify their macroinvertebrates and use the data to determine the pollution tolerance index for various areas of a river.

Students apply everything they have learned over the course of the associated lessons about waves, light properties, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the structure of the eye, by designing devices that can aid color blind people in distinguishing colors. Students learn about the engineering design process and develop three possible solutions to the engineering design challenge outlined in lesson 1 of this unit. They create posters to display their three design ideas and the comparisons used to select the best design. Then, students create brochures for their final design ideas, and "sell" the ideas to their "client." Through this activity, students complete the legacy cycle by "going public" with the creation of their informative posters and brochures that explain their designs, as well as color blindness and how people see color, in "client" presentations.

Students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in yeast-molasses cultures. Each student adds a small amount of baking yeast to a test tube filled with diluted molasses. A second, smaller test tube is then placed upside-down inside the solution. As the yeast cells respire, the carbon dioxide they produce is trapped inside the inverted test tube, producing a growing bubble of gas that is easily observed and measured. Students are presented with the procedure for designing an effective experiment; they learn to think critically about experimental results and indirect observations of experimental events.