Instructify

BY REBECCAH HAINES

I’d wager that if you asked your students what their favorite class was, at least half of them would say “Lunch.” With the Science of Cooking from Exploratorium, you can take advantage of students’ inherent adoration of food and teach a little science as well.

This website contains a collection of recipes, activities, and webcasts about the science behind cooking. The main categories of food under study are eggs, pickles, candy, bread, seasonings, and meats. Within each of these categories you’ll find some fun things to use in your classroom. You may be thinking to yourself, “well, that’s nice, but the science of cooking is NOT on my standard course of study.” Bear with me as we examine the candy section (I’m thinking your students will like this one in particular) for resources that ARE in your standard course of study. For example, there’s an article on the science of sugar that includes some chemistry — its chemical formula, properties, and behavior in solutions. It’s definitely an interesting way to relate these concepts to your students. Other activities include exploring why wintergreen lifesavers spark in your mouth in the dark,  and growing marshmallows to monster proportions. Both of these would definitely be fun demonstrations with your students and could be used to draw them into discussions of friction and the gas laws.

Each of the other sections offer similar resources that can be used to introduce or give examples of some more complicated scientific concepts. Teaching osmosis? Use the eggs section to make “Naked Eggs” and then use those eggs to demonstrate osmosis. Introducing fermentation or the study of microorganisms? Check out the article on pickling. Examining the sense of smell or taste? Take a look at the interactive on experiencing flavor.

While the draw for this website is the food, you can definitely use it to illustrate some real science. Just don’t torture your students with it before lunch.

Science of Cooking from Exploratorium

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BY AARON FOWLES

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you weren’t the greatest math student. The earlier math classes may not have been that hard, but Algebra 2 threw you through a loop. The teachers tried and tried with their overhead projector to make the problems spring to life, but nothing worked.  You just couldn’t picture it.

For the modern student, enter Khan Academy. This site and accompanying Youtube channel contain more than 1,800 short videos on topics mathematical, biological, chemical, and even historical.

It’s hard to sufficiently describe the wealth of knowledge hidden in these videos. Even harder to describe than the content of the videos is the creator, Salman Khan. Operating out of a closet in his home, Khan cranks out videos at breakneck pace using a simple tablet and display program. Khan Academy’s screencasts are picking up fans across the world, including Bill Gates.

Besides the videos, khanacademy.org also has self-paced and instantly graded practice activities that measure a learner’s mastery of the content. The results of these activities can be stored and accessed at a later time, making Khan Academy a great resource for teachers who want to develop a picture of a student’s progress.

Khan Academy

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Chemistry is one of those subjects that really can flourish with the addition of multimedia elements, but often requires you to blow the whole budget on supplies and equipment. What you end up with is a state-of-the-art chemistry lab in which you show instructional videos that run on those ancient 8mm projectors talking about the dawn of atomic power.

If this is the case in your neck of the woods, you should check out the Chemistry Educational Digital Library. (more…)

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Now this is what I like in a website name – straightforward, telling you like it is.  There is no doubt as to what you’ll find at Learningscience.org. That’s right, you’ll find websites to help your students learn science.

Essentially, Learningscience.org is a nicely categorized clearinghouse of interactive science websites.  The first choice of categories are: Science Inquiry, Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space, Science and Technology, Science and Society, and The History and Nature of Science.  Savvy science teachers will recognize these categories as the same ones within the National Science Education Standards. (more…)

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

When I was a small child growing up, one of my all-time-favorite phrases was a single word, “why?”. I had to know how things worked, why things interacted the way they did, to the point of driving my teachers and parents crazy. So when I saw Inquiry in Action, I had to write it up because I wish it had been around when I was a kid.

(more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Win a trip to Antarctica. Yes, that’s supposed to be an incentive.

PolarTREC will send 36 teachers to the Arctic or Antarctic to work with polar research teams. They’ll take a mittens-on approach to learning about atmospheric chemistry, biology, history and culture in the coldest places on earth. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

For this month’s random roundup, we’ve selected the Library of Congress, our nation’s storehouse of pretty much everything worth knowing. As you’d expect, a lot of great resources for teachers have been derived from the Library. See your tax dollars at work by reading the articles linked after the jump.

(more…)

Ever wonder what’s the lifespan of a flea? Or how sunscreen works? Or who developed the Nobel-worthy invention of the TV dinner?* Of course you haven’t, but that’s not the point. As any person who has won a trivia contest will tell you, it’s fun to show off knowledge of obscure facts in any subject. Like music and sports, science is a subject that lends itself especially well to this sort of trivia. You can find lots of it at Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress.

The site groups its facts into categories like physics, technology, zoology and plant life. Personally, I enjoy browsing through the questions listed on the site and just see what I can learn. Everyday Mysteries is a great place to begin stockpiling questions for a classroom trivia contest, or if you’re in the mood to learn fun facts about a particular topic.  -BILL FERRIS

Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress

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* 30-90 days, by combining organic and inorganic active ingredients, and several geniuses, respectively.

Photo credit: mastrobiggo on Flickr.

Quick! Name five famous discoveries honored by the Nobel Prize…(crickets chirping)….Um, Al Gore won one, right? Ask your students and you’ll likely get a similar response. The people at Nobelprize.org decided that they didn’t want children growing up not understanding the significant accomplishments honored by the Nobel Prize. By visiting the educational outreach section of the website, you can introduce your students to these accomplishments in a fun and engaging way, as well as teach your course content.

The site offers several interactive activities for each category of Nobel Prize — physics, chemistry, literature, medicine, peace, and economics. There are games, readings, and simulations in each section. In my class, I’ve used the blood typing game to help students understand the differences between blood types. In the physics section, there is an interesting simulation about microscopes. By using this, you could show students what the different types of microscopes can do. There is also a microscope quiz that could be used to assess understanding. Another neat feature is the readings. In the DNA-RNA-Protein reading, for example, you can select a “Basic” or an “Advanced” text. This would be excellent for differentiating instruction.

Lest you think this site is only good for Science, there is a section about the Nobel Prize in Literature, and a game about William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies. I’m kind of a science gal, so I didn’t do so hot on that game; maybe your high school English students will do better. Regardless, you will find this site useful. -REBECCAH HAINES

Educational Games via Nobelprize.org

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You can find a lot of interactive periodic tables online, but periodictable.com has one thing the others don’t — the easiest-to-remember URL.

Seriously, though, this periodic table is more than just a pretty web address. You can click on any of the elements, bringing up lots of information and high-quality photos, so you can finally see what reclusive elements like bismuth look like.

Periodictable.com is brought to you by Theodore Gray, a science and chemistry columnist for Popular Science and co-founder of Wolfram Research. He takes science education seriously, and this site has information sections for teachers and students, as well as scientists. Gray says, “This site is entirely ‘school safe’ in the sense that while the writing is lively and entertaining, students will not find anything inappropriate here, and links to external sites are limited to other reputable websites.” [EDITOR'S NOTE: Little does he know riff-raff like us are linking to him, however.]

If you like the look of periodictable.com better than the wrinkled old chart of the elements you’ve got hanging in your classroom, you can order a poster version. For your students, however, the site itself will likely be enough, and it gives them all the information on the elements they’ll need.

While the field of online periodic tables is a crowded one, periodictable.com distinguishes itself with great photos, good info, and a URL you don’t have to write down. The snazzy black background is nice, too. -BILL FERRIS

Periodictable.com

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Everyone would agree that learning is important. If we didn’t, none of us would be doing what we do. But are we practicing what we preach to our students? Are we, as educators, continuing our education in the same way we urge our students to do every day? In the past, unless you were willing to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars for additional schooling, continuing education was tough to come by. Not anymore.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education. In conjunction with top-level universities such as MIT and Princeton, Academic Earth brings the best content together in one place and creates an environment where that content is remarkably easy to use.

There are thousands of lectures currently available from the world’s top scholars. You may already be familiar with the MIT Open Courseware project or the Open Yale courses, which make thousands and thousands of lectures and courses available online for free. Academic Earth includes these resources but has added lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.

Currently, 17 subjects are represented ranging from Astronomy to Religion. All subjects include individual lectures, but many of them also offer entire courses. For example, if you’re interested in Computer Science, you can view all 32 lectures in Introduction to Computer Science I by David J. Malan at Harvard — for free. All of the videos at AE can be shared to a Facebook page, emailed, or embedded into a blog or wiki. Academic Earth also gives users the ability to create your own custom play list to make future visits a tad easier.

So the next time you’ve got the urge to learn a little about “The Fourier Transform and its applications” or “Convex Optimization,” Academic Earth is the place to go. – JERRY SWIATEK

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I really got my hopes up when I heard about Bad Science. I figured it would be filled with death rays, time machines and laser beams. Alas (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), Bad Science actually deals with the misconceptions and bogus scientific “facts” many people harbor. This site debunks misguided ideas such as the notion that raindrops are shaped like teardrops, or that the Apollo moon landing was faked.

Bad Science consists of several branch sites like Bad Chemistry and Bad Astronomy, which are pretty much what they sound like. According to Alistair B. Fraser, the site’s creator, “When I created this page, in January, 1995, I naïvely expected that other frustrated teachers would rush to build sites devoted to, say, Bad Archeology and Bad Biology. It has not happened. Apparently, most teachers believe everything they teach.” [EDITOR'S NOTE: He didn't mean Instructify readers, of course.]

If you’re wondering if you or your students have any scientific misconceptions, hop on over to Bad Science and take a look. Just let me know if you see any entries for time machines. -BILL FERRIS

Bad Science

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At Instructify, we’re bombarded with requests for songs explaining scientific concepts. And by “bombarded,” I mean, “it’s never actually happened.” Which is a shame, because you can find several such songs out there. Much like how The Element Song covers the periodic table, The Biochemists’ Songbook tackles several scientific ideas like respiration, protein biosynthesis and photosynthesis, setting them to well-known tunes that will make them easier for your students to remember.

The songs were originally penned by Dr. Harold Baum, a professor at Chelsea College of the University of London, who created them as a gag for his department’s annual Christmas party. The songs were eventually recorded and released on tape in the 1980s, but have since gone out-of-print. Fortunately, some bored kind soul created .mp3s of the songs, and even got Dr. Baum’s permission to distribute them online (the book of lyrics is still in copyright, however, so you’ll either have to buy it or Google the lyrics yourself).

Yes, these tunes are a little on the cheesy side, but it’s amazing what sort of knowledge can get stuck in students’ heads if they’re set to music. You’ll never hear “Auld Lang Syne” again without thinking of photosynthesis. -BILL FERRIS

The Biochemists’ Songbook

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If you’re a teacher who likes your science to be of the mad variety, then you might already know about the Ig Nobel Prize. For those who don’t, each year, Annals of Improbable Research, a magazine of science-humor, honors scientific research that’s as funny as it is thought-provoking, all in the name of stoking public interest in the sciences. Since part of your job is to get your students fired up about science, this stuff should be right up your alley.

What sort of research wins an Ig Nobel? Projects like electronically modifying the crunch of a potato chip to make people believe it’s fresher than it actually is. Or measuring how one armadillo can thwart an archaeological dig. Or the groundbreaking discovery that fleas living on a dog can jump higher than fleas living on a cat. Any one of the winning projects are great discussion-launchers about science for science’s sake. Also, during election years, candidates love questioning how obscure research projects like these got funding. This may be a good opportunity to talk about what benefits this sort of work has that may not be readily apparent. For bonus points, maybe your class can brainstorm some ideas worthy of an award of their own.

You can listen to a condensed version of the awards ceremony via podcast from Talk of the Nation‘s Science Friday with Ira Flatow. In addition to hearing about these great projects, you’ll also hear the 24/7 lectures — complex scientific studies summed up in 24 seconds, and then again in a mere seven-words — as well as some hilarious acceptance speeches from award winners brave enough to attend (and no Oscar-style long speeches, either — if a speech goes on too long, the long-winded winner hears a small child say, “Please stop, I’m bored,” over and over).

The Ig Nobel Prize is a fun way to introduce science to people who might otherwise have no interest in it. Conversely, it may also make a few of the winners rethink how they’ve elected to spend their lives. In the words of the Ig Nobel committee, “If you didn’t win an Ig Nobel Prize this year — and especially if you did — better luck next year.” -BILL FERRIS

Ig Nobel Prize

Ig Nobel Prize ceremony via Talk of the Nation/Science Friday

I was never great at remembering the periodic table, except for knowing the symbol for iron is “Fe” for “ferrous,” which sounds like my last name. Maybe I struggled with the rest of the table because I didn’t have an equally catchy way to relate the other elements to my life. Too bad I didn’t have WebElements back then.

WebElements lets you look at the periodic in different contexts, depending on your specialty or interest area. For example, if you’re a biology teacher, you can click on the Biology tab. Then if you select, say, hydrogen, WebElements will display information on hydrogen most relevant to biology. Same goes for physics, chemistry, geology, and even history (some elements, like gold, are more historically interesting than stuff like caesium or ununtrium). For English majors like me, you can hear an audio pronunciation for each element — now I can say ununquadium properly (it comes up more often than you’d think).

The best thing about WebElements is that it lets you learn about the elements in whatever context works best for you. If they ever add an “English” tab, I may just have to become a scientist myself. -BILL FERRIS

WebElements

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