Mosquito! How Can We Ensure Health For All From Mosquito-borne Diseases?

Mosquito! is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. These Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are defined and implemented by students. Mosquito! is a module broken up into seven parts. Each part contains a series of tasks to complete. Each task contains additional resources to support that task. We have provided a suggested order for the parts and tasks. However, the structure of the guide hopefully allows you to customize your learning experience by selecting which parts, tasks, and resources you would like to utilize and in what order you would like to complete them.

Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Authors: InterAcademy Partnership, Smithsonian Science Education Center

Vaccines! How can we use science to help our community make decisions about vaccines?

Vaccines! is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. The Vaccines! guide helps young people learn more about the concerns of their community in order to communicate accurate, helpful, and trusted information about vaccines. Vaccines! features 8 tasks that incorporate investigations and hands-on science to help students discover, understand, and take action. Students learn about the science of vaccines throughout history; understand the science of how vaccines work; explore how vaccines are developed; examine issues of equity, access, and misinformation; and develop an action plan for addressing vaccines concerns in their communities.

Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Authors: InterAcademy Partnership, Smithsonian Science Education Center

Afterimage

In this activity about light and perception, learners discover how a flash of light can create a lingering image called an "afterimage" on the retina of the eye. Learners will be surprised when they continue to see an image of a bright object after staring at it and looking away. Use this activity to introduce learners to principles of optics and perception as well as to explain why the full moon often appears larger when it is on the horizon than when it is overhead. This lesson guide also includes a few extensions like how to take "afterimage photographs."

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Agar Cell Diffusion

All biological cells require the transport of materials across the plasma membrane into and out of the cell. By infusing cubes of agar with a pH indicator, and then soaking the treated cubes in vinegar, you can model how diffusion occurs in cells. Then, by observing cubes of different sizes, you can discover why larger cells might need extra help to transport materials.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Aluminum-Air Battery

Use aluminum foil, salt water, and activated charcoal to construct a simple battery strong enough to power a small motor or light.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Ames Chair

Short pieces of chenille stem arranged inside a box look like a random jumble of line segments—until viewed in the proper perspective. Note: This activity is detail oriented and time intensive. It’s done by threading a long length of fishing line through twenty small holes, and then attaching short pieces of chenille stem to create a suspended pattern. When you look through a viewing hole, that random-looking pattern resolves into the form of a chair. If you think being a watchmaker is something you’d hate, then you might want to rethink doing this Snack!

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Anti-Gravity Mirror

In this demonstration, amaze learners by performing simple tricks using mirrors. These tricks take advantage of how a mirror can reflect your right side so it appears to be your left side. To make the effect more dramatic, cover the mirror with a cloth, climb onto the table, straddle the mirror, and then drop the cloth as you appear to "take off." This resource contains information about how this trick was applied during the making of the movie "Star Wars."

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: California Department of Education, National Science Foundation, NEC Foundation of America, The Exploratorium

Anti-Sound Spring

In this simple exploration, a coiled phone cord slows the motion of a wave so you can see how a single pulse travels and what happens when two traveling wave pulses meet in the middle.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Avalanche

What starts out as a cascade of well-mixed granular materials sorts itself into alternating layers of salt and sand.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Backyard Bug Bonanza

Step outside and discover the diversity of insect life in your neighborhood. Insects are the world’s most diverse group of living things, with over 950,000 identified species and counting. You might think that you’d need to travel to the Amazon to study insects, but they can be found practically everywhere—including right where you happen to be.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Bacteria Culture Club

Yogurt is the byproduct of hungry bacteria that digest the lactose in milk. You can make more yogurt just by feeding the bacteria more milk.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Balancing Ball

This webpage from Exploratorium provides an activity that demonstrates the Bernoulli principle with readily available materials. In this activity a table tennis ball is levitated in a stream of air from a vacuum cleaner. The site provides an explanation of what happens, asks questions about the activity, and also describes applications to flight. This activity is part of Exploratorium's Science Snacks series.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Balancing Stick

In this quick and simple activity, learners explore how the distribution of the mass of an object determines the position of its center of gravity, its angular momentum, and your ability to balance it. Learners discover it is easier to balance a wooden dowel on the tip of their fingers when a lump of clay is near the top of the stick. Use this activity to introduce learners to rotational inertia.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Bean-Counter Evolution

Hunt for prey and discover the meaning of evolutionary “fitness” in this physically active group game. In this simulation game, teams of predators equipped with genetically different “mouths” (utensils) hunt for “prey” (assorted beans). Over several “generations” of play, the fittest among the predators and prey dominate the population, modeling the evolutionary process of natural selection.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Bee Hummer

When you spin it around, this toy sounds like a swarm of buzzing bees.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Benham's Disk

In this optics activity, learners discover that when they rotate a special black and white pattern called a Benham's Disk, it produces the illusion of colored rings. Learners experiment with the speed of rotation and direction of rotation to observe varying patterns. Use this activity to explain to learners how our eyes detect color and how different color receptors in the eye respond at different rates.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: California Department of Education, Don Rathjen, National Science Foundation, NEC Foundation of America, The Exploratorium

Bernoulli Levitator

Demonstrate the Bernoulli Principle using simple materials on a small or large scale. This resource includes two activities that allow learners to experience the Bernoulli Principle, in which an object is suspended in air by blowing down on it. Use this activity to explain how atomizers work and why windows are sometimes sucked out of their frames as two trains rush past each other.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Bicycle-Wheel Gyro

In this activity, a spinning bicycle wheel resists efforts to tilt it and point the axle in a new direction. Learners use the bicycle wheel like a giant gyroscope to explore angular momentum and torque. Learners can participate in the assembly of the Bicycle Wheel Gyro or use a preassembled unit to explore these concepts and go for an unexpected spin!

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Bird in a Cage

Stare at one color—but see another. You see color when receptor cells (called cones) in your eye’s retina are stimulated by light. There are three types of cones, and each is sensitive to a particular color range. If one or more of the three types of cones adapts to a stimulus because of long exposure, it responds less strongly than it normally would.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Blind Spot

The eye’s retina receives and reacts to incoming light and sends signals to the brain, allowing you to see. One part of the retina, however, doesn't give you visual information—this is your eye’s “blind spot.”

Material Type: Activity/Lab