All resources in Virtual Virginia

Evolution: What Makes us Human?

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TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections — supplemented by rich educational materials — for students, educators and self-guided learners. in What Makes Us Human?, TED speakers tackle humanity’s oldest and deepest questions by playing with primates, excavating ancient remains, and DNA-mapping family trees. Explore how the next chapters of our own evolutionary story will be written thanks to new technologies that trace our origin. 

Material Type: Lecture, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: James Calcagno

Let the Sun Shine!

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Students learn how the sun can be used for energy. They learn about passive solar heating, lighting and cooking, and active solar engineering technologies (such as photovoltaic arrays and concentrating mirrors) that generate electricity. Students investigate the thermal energy storage capacities of test materials. They learn about radiation and convection as they build a model solar water heater and determine how much it can heat water in a given amount of time. In another activity, students build and compare the performance of four solar cooker designs. In an associated literacy activity, students investigate how people live "off the grid" using solar power.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Denise Carlson, Jeff Lyng, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Sabre Duren, Xochitl Zamora-Thompson

SLASL: Relationships between differential equations, population dynamics, and global climate change

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This unit includes 5 lessons that culminates in a persuasive argument in the form of letter to congressional member or grant proposal to Duke Energy. Using inquiry-based reading, students will explore an anchor text and then develop their own supporting questions to guide their research.

Material Type: Unit of Study

Authors: Christina Segura, Brian Smith, Jeanne Cooper

Climate Kids: Gallery of Air

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This series of 7 captioned images depict sources, causes and results of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. This lesson is part of the Climate Kids website, a NASA education resource featuring articles, videos, images and games focused on the science of climate change.

Material Type: Diagram/Illustration

Chromatography Lab

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To increase students' awareness of possible invisible pollutants in drinking water sources, students perform an exciting lab requiring them to think about how solutions and mixtures exist even in unsuspecting places such as ink. They use alcohol and chromatography paper to separate the components of black and colored marker ink. Students witness first-hand how components of a solution can be separated, even when those individual components are not visible in solution.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Barry Williams, Jessica Ray, Phyllis Balcerzak

Science of Soil

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Science of Soil modules are fun animations and hands-on interactives to foster learning on key concepts that can hinder understanding of soils topics -- such as logarithms, graph reading, and multidimensional thinking. They were created to fill the gaps in Soil and Environmental Science undergraduates' knowledge of key concepts in the classroom.

Material Type: Interactive

Author: NMSU Learning Games Lab

Carbon Cycle Role-Play

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Students will learn that there is a finite amount of carbon on earth, which moves around in the environment, from one place to another. Activity is scaleable from elementary to high school with options to introduce advanced content. Wrap up includes role playing the carbon cycle with the addition of human influences (e.g. burning of fossil fuels). Activity can be done in classroom or outside, includes working in a group and role playing. Grades 3-12. This resources is part of the Our Changing Ocean and Estuaries Series

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: California Academy of Sciences

General Chemistry

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The modern human experience places a large emphasis upon the material world. From the day of our birth to the day we die, we are frequently preoccupied with the world around us. Whether struggling to feed ourselves, occupying ourselves with modern inventions, interacting with other people or animals, or simply meditating on the air we breathe, our attention is focused on different aspects of the material world. In fact only a handful of disciplines—certain subsets of religion, philosophy, and abstract math—can be considered completely unrelated to the material world. Everything else is somehow related to chemistry, the scientific discipline which studies the properties, composition, and transformation of matter.

Material Type: Textbook

Chemistry Education Research and Practice

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Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP) is the journal for teachers, researchers and other practitioners at all levels of chemistry education. It is published free of charge, electronically, four times a year; coverage includes the following: -Research, and reviews of research, in chemistry education -Evaluations of effective innovative practice in the teaching of chemistry -In-depth analyses of issues of direct relevance to chemistry education The objectives of the journal follow: -To provide researchers with the means to publish their work in full in a journal exclusively dedicated to chemistry education -To offer teachers of chemistry at all levels a place where they can share effective ideas and methods for the teaching and learning of chemistry -Most importantly, to bridge the gap between the two groups so that researchers will have their results seen by those who could benefit from using them, and practitioners will gain from encountering the ideas and results of those who have made a particular study of the learning process

Material Type: Reading

Introductory Chemistry

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David W. Ball of Cleveland State University brings his new survey of general chemistry text, Introductory Chemistry, to the market with a fresh theme that will be sure to hold student interest: "Chemistry is Everywhere." Introductory Chemistry is intended for a one-semester introductory or preparatory chemistry course. Throughout the chapters, David presents two features that reinforce the theme of the textbook, that chemistry is everywhere.The first is the boxed feature titled, appropriately, “Chemistry is Everywhere”. This feature takes a topic of the chapter and demonstrates how this topic shows up in everyday life. In the introductory chapter, “Chemistry is Everywhere” focuses on the personal hygiene products that students may use every morning: toothpaste, soap, shampoo among others. These products are chemicals, aren’t they? This book explores some of the chemical reactions like the ones that give students clean and healthy teeth, and shiny hair. This feature makes it clear to students that chemistry is, indeed, everywhere, and it will promote student retention in what is sometimes considered an intimidating course.The second boxed feature focuses on chemistry that students likely indulge in every day: eating and drinking. In the “Food and Drink App”, David discusses how the chemistry of the chapter applies to things that students eat and drink every day. Carbonated beverages depend on the behavior of gases, foods contain acids and bases, and everyone actually eats certain rocks. (Yikes!) Cooking, eating, drinking, metabolism – all chemical processes students are involved with all the time. These features allow students to see the things we interact with every day in a new light – as chemistry.Just like many of the one-semester chemistry books you may be used to, each section in David Ball's <="" em=""> starts with one or more Learning Objectives, which list the main points of the section. Each section ends with Key Takeaways, which are reviews of the main points of the section. Each chapter is full of examples to illustrate the key points of the materials, and each example is followed with a similar “Test Yourself” exercise to see if the student understands the concept. Each section ends with its own set of paired exercises to practice the material from that section, and each chapter ends with a section of “Additional Exercises” that are more challenging or require multiple steps or skills to answer.David took the time to treat mathematical problems in Introductory Chemistry one of two ways, either as a conversion-factor problem or as a formula problem. David believes having two basic mathematical approaches (converting and formulas) allows the text to focus on the logic of the approach and not tricks or shortcuts; which speaks to the final point about Introductory Chemistry.You'll notice that David took no shortcuts with the material in this text, his inviting writing style, concise approach, consistent presentation, and interesting pedagogy have given it some of the best peer reviews we've seen at Flat World. So, order a desk copy or dive in now to see for yourself.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: David W. Ball

Why Does Chemistry Matter In My Life?

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Why does chemistry matter in my life? These lessons address this question and are designed to be used throughout the high school course and support the North Carolina standard course of study objectives in chemistry. Each lesson presents a problem to the student that they will endeavor to answer using a variety of activities. These activities may be modified to suit the needs of your students. The problems are intended to generate student interest so they will be more likely to engage in the lesson.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Author: Lisa Hibler

1: Measurements in the Laboratory (Experiment)

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Chemistry is the study of matter. Our understanding of chemical processes thus depends on our ability to acquire accurate information about matter. Often, this information is quantitative, in the form of measurements. In this lab, you will be introduced to some common measuring devices, and learn how to use them to obtain correct measurements, each with correct precision. A metric ruler will be used to measure length in centimeters (cm).

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Textbook

Author: Santa Monica College