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Students, in their role as scientists, create and finalize a collaborative model of the global carbon cycle. As a class, they use the model in a presentation aimed to inform and inspire an invited audience to think more carefully about the impacts of fossil fuel use. This lesson is part of the Carbon Trackers unit.

For hundreds of years, people have harnessed moving air (wind) to do work. The earliest forms of wind-powered machines were sailboats. Wind pushing against the sails of a boat provided the energy to move the boat across the water, saving people the trouble of rowing. Later, people discovered that if they attached sail-like panels to a wheel at the top of a stationary tower, wind blowing against the panels would cause the wheel and the central shaft to which it was attached to turn. The shaft drove mechanisms inside the tower that were used to mill, or grind, grain into flour. These wind-driven mills were called, simply, windmills. And even though wind-driven machines are now also used to pump water from wells and to generate electricity, the name windmill has stuck.

In this activity, students review the engineering design process and discuss how wind can be used to help get work done. They look at a variety of windmills, focusing on the different materials used in the construction of windmills and the type of work each windmill is designed to do. Finally, they use simple materials to build their own windmills to do work.

Explore how weather can change during snowstorms in this slideshow produced by WGBH. The images show the progression of snowstorms from a light flurry, to steady snow, to a blizzard, to conditions after a storm ends. Students can use the images in the slideshow to identify and describe the characteristics of each condition of the storm and compare conditions throughout the storm.

To view the Background Essay, Student Activity, Teaching Tips, and Non-Visual (NV) supports for this slideshow, go to Support Materials below. This resource was developed through WGBH’s Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms project, in collaboration with NASA. Click here for the full collection of resources.

In this lesson, students measure the volume and mass of water to determine its density. Then they measure the mass of different volumes of water and discover that the density is always the same. Students make a graph of the relationship between the volume and the mass of water.

Students will be able to measure the volume and mass of water and calculate its density. Students will be able to explain that since any volume of water always has the same density, at a given temperature, that density is a characteristic property of water.

Students brainstorm what they know and need to learn about endangered species, in order to best answer the driving question for the unit. Students then engage with a variety of sources about the Sumatran rhino to learn about conservation concepts, including causes of extinction, food webs, and ecosystem services. This lesson is part of the Extinction Stinks! unit.

In this interactive, students will play the role of a lighting designer to understand that the lighting designer creates stage lighting for performances and that one needs to understand how the electrical components are connected. This animated interactive job exploration experience connects schoolwork with real work and familiarizes students with skills needed to become a lighting designer for the theater.

Observe and annotate various images of weather phenomena in this interactive drawing tool produced by WGBH. Weather is the combination of various factors—snow or rain, wind, sunlight and clouds, and temperature—that happens in a specific location at a specific time. As the combination of factors constantly shifts, the condition changes and leaves behind evidence that shows how the weather has changed. Students can use the images in this interactive tool to observe weather conditions and document evidence of weather that happened earlier in the day.

In this lesson, students will observe the dissolved carbon dioxide (CO₂) in a bottle of club soda. They will help design an experiment to compare the amount of CO₂ that stays in cold club soda compared to warmer club soda.

Students will be able to explain, on the molecular level, how a gas dissolves in water. They will also be able to explain why the gas comes out of the solution faster in warm water than in cold water.

In this lesson, students review each step of the water-treatment process used to make water potable and analyze the order in which the steps occur.

Learn about kids who are helping the environment by reducing waste in their school. This Cyberchase-presented video features P.S. 110's Green Team who is helping their school recycle and compost more. P.S. 110 is a Greenpoint Eco-School, a local variation of a national Eco-Schools USA program for grades PreK–12 that combines the effective green management of school grounds, facilities, and curriculum to empower today’s students for a sustainable tomorrow. Refer to the accompanying discussion questions and teaching tips for ideas on using this video to help students consider ways to reduce waste and help the environment.

For more environmental education resources, visit the Human Impact on the Environment collection.

Explore how light moves and describe how an object in a dark space only becomes visible when light moves into the space and illuminates it. Interactive activities, time-lapse videos, and images are used to enhance student observations as they identify objects in the path of light or follow the path of light from its source.

Support materials include: Handouts and Teaching Tips. This resource was developed through WGBH’s Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms project, in collaboration with NASA.

The associated lesson plan Let's Explore Light provides more support for teachers and students, including handouts and materials for diverse learners.

In this lesson, students will see a demonstration of a color change using universal pH indicator. Students will change the concentrations of an acid and a base and use the universal indicator to test the pH of the resulting solutions. Students will see an animation showing that water molecules interact and separate into the H3O+ ion and the OH− ion. Students will see that the pH of a solution is related to the concentration of these ions in water.

Students will be able to explain, on the molecular level, that pH is a measure of the concentration of the H3O+ ions in water and that adding an acid or a base to water affects the concentration of these ions.

Foregrounding scientific vocabulary, these integrated lesson plans invite students to research worms in order to create a classroom habitat. Students are first introduced to inquiry notebooks and then use them to record what they already know about worms. Next, students observe the cover of a fiction book about worms and make a hypothesis on whether the book is fact or fiction, and then check their hypotheses after the book is read aloud. Next, after an introduction to related scientific words such as hypothesis, habitat, attribute, predator, and prey, students conduct and record research and findings in their inquiry notebooks. Once they have gathered the necessary information, students plan and build a worm habitat, which becomes the springboard for further scientific exploration, observation, and experimentation.

In this activity, students explore the parts of a circuit by modeling, as a group, a “human” circuit.

Students observe, compare, and describe waves, using videos and images of actual waves as well as model diagrams. This interactive lesson engages students in noticing the shape of (transverse) waves and learning how to describe and measure the amplitude and wavelength of waves.