Instructify

I’m sure you’re familiar with the periodic chart of elements. Here’s a bare-bones rundown of how it’s laid out: hydrogen and helium are hanging out at the top all on their own, elements in the same row have something in common, and so do elements in the same column (but not all columns). And that’s the basic scheme. Cool with everything so far? Great. Now all you have to do is go through the painful, tedious memorization of each element on every square. Awesome, I’ll see you in a week or two.

So maybe rote memorization of the periodic chart isn’t quite cutting it for your students. Maybe it’s the opposite: your students have taken such an interest in the periodic chart that they’ve not only memorized it, but now they have you cornered and are demanding further explanations for Ununbium and Protactinium. Whichever direction things are going in your science classroom, The University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos has you covered. They provide a video for EACH AND EVERY element on the periodic chart, with concise explanations and several demonstrated experiments.

I’ll also point out that Professor Martyn Poliakoff isn’t afraid to rock the Dr. Emmett Brown/Einstein hairstyle, which, to me, gives him more street cred as a scientist.
–NICK YINGLING

Periodic Table of Videos

Related Stuff:

Art and Science Collide in the Periodic Table Printmaking Project

Have a Look at This: Visual Elements Periodic Table

They Deafened Me with Science: The Element Song Returns

Upgrade Your Knowledge of the Elements with the Dynamic Periodic Table

8 Tips to Help You Think Like a Genius - I don’t need these tips, personally, because me am already genius. You might find them useful, though. ZME Lifetips recommends visualization, being productive, and thinking metaphorically amongst others. Start using these tips and you’ll be a geinus in no time.

5 Questions That Will Save You Time and Money - Lifehack presents this list of questions you should ask yourself to tell if you are being productive or actually wasting time. There are a lot of do-it-yourself-ers out there who think they can do-it-themselves but they end up not-doing-it-right so they end-up-paying-for-it-later. The first of these five questions sums it up nicely: Do I have the skills necessary for the task?

6 Best Ways to Learn Physics… For Free - I don’t know much about physics, but I do know it is easier to understand if you see it in action. Blog Learn Out Loud has compiled this list of a few good video demonstrations you can find on the web. Included on the list is a great video we mentioned before about the 10th dimension.

List of Educational Web 2.0 Apps to Jumpstart Your Productivity - There are a lot of Web 2.0 applications out there, but only a few are catered toward becoming a better learner. DiplomaGuide has found some of the better ones available. These 25 applications are divided into categories like ‘organization’ and ‘note taking’. There seems like a good mix here, so sort your way through to find what you can recommend to your students. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Szagi on flickr

Learn the workings of the solar system by building your own. With My Solar System you can see how suns, planets, moons and comets interact.

You choose the number and size of heavenly bodies in your solar system. And size matters - make your sun too big, and watch a planet crash into it (which is kinda cool, actually). Make a planet too small and its moon will ditch it to just revolve around the sun instead.

My Solar System also has preset solar system alignments, which are definitely worth checking out. My favorite - the slingshot, where a planet is revolving around the sun, minding its own business, then gets caught in another planet’s gravitational field. Next thing it knows, it’s getting flung into deep space because that meddling planet #2 doesn’t have enough gravity to hang onto it. So tragic. So fun.

Your students should enjoy My Solar System whether you’re an elementary teacher studying the planets for the first time, or if you’re a physics instructor demonstrating gravitational pull. And don’t forget to discuss the ethical implications of creating planets specifically hoping they’ll collide. -BILL FERRIS

My Solar System

Here’s a way for your students to exercise their creativity as well as their capacity for smashing stuff. Phun lets students learn about physics, friction and resistance in a virtual world, which means your classroom won’t incur any collateral damage.

Phun lets kids create shapes out of thin air that collide with one another. Use chains and springs to connect or, my favorite, send one object smashing into another.

Your kids should be able to learn to use Phun in a couple of minutes just by messing aroud with it. Want to make a boulder? Draw one. It’ll plummet into the abyss, though, unless they create a floor to land on. From these humble beginnings, they’ll soon move on to knocking over rectangular walls with the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Swedish grad student Emil Ernerfeldt of Umeå University built Phun as a “2D physics playground.” True enough, you can create your own virtual swing set, as well as tetherball and sling shot if you so choose. Just none of the scrapes and bruises. -BILL FERRIS

Phun

Related Stuff:
Learn Science and Kill a Few Hours with Launchball

Find two school programs with less in common than art and science. Okay, maybe band and auto shop don’t have much in common. But for our purposes today, let’s say art and science are polar opposites within most schools. They’re on different sides of the building (if the art program hasn’t been cut altogether), and they attract very different students.

Or do they?

The lines between art and science blur in the Periodic Table of Elements Printmaking Project. Ninety-six printmakers from around the country joined forces to create prints for every element on the periodic table. Each print is inspired by the element it showcases (for example, the metal potassium depicts what looks like a bunch of robotic bananas).

The uses of this table are twofold: having a visual aid can help students memorize the elements easier. It’s also a fun project idea if you’re an art teacher and want to show that anything can be made into art. The table’s only drawback is that not all prints show all the information, so supplementing it with a standard periodic table is a good idea. But it could be an indispensable tool for art students in a science class, or visual thinkers of any discipline. -BILL FERRIS

Periodic Table of Elements Printmaking Project

Related Stuff:
Have a Look at This: Visual Elements Periodic Table
Upgrade Your Knowledge of the Elements with the Dynamic Periodic Table

If you are too lazy or unimaginative to go out and see how physics works in the real world, you can simply visit Physics.org ’s interactive street Physics Life and get it all in handy dandy Flash format. The site has lots of fun games and activities for you to learn about how physics affects you in your everyday life, and the site is well designed enough that I personally endorse it.

You can use the site to explore, interact, or find careers that involve physics, or point your students to something they might find useful. One of my favorite utilities of the site is the “facts” area, where you can see the physics behind such bizarre facts as “Frogs Levitate in a Strong Enough Magnetic Field.” The Physics Life section is a real gem, though, as it takes a Flash look at how physics affect the world right on your street, including home, school, and the office. Fun stuff for a Friday afternoon. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Physics Life

One of the reasons I didn’t major in the sciences was the periodic table. What may look to scientists like a finely-ordered display of the building blocks of the world, appears to me as a mess of senseless symbols (lead is Pb? How can I remember that?) or random strings of consonants (what the hey is yttrium?).

Back then, I could’ve used the Visual Elements Periodic Table. Each element is accompanied by a graphic that gives some insight into each element. Tungsten, which makes up light bulb filaments, features a picture of a light bulb. Naturally, you can also read up on the element’s discovery, uses, atomic number, all that stuff.

Now that I’ve got a visual association with each element, I might be able to memorize the entire periodic table and go on to win a Nobel Prize or something. But I must remember my duty to this blog which, I assure you, is the only thing standing in the way of my scientific success. Honest. -BILL FERRIS

Visual Elements Periodic Table

Humans are inexorably drawn to the mysteries of space. Maybe it is the everyday experience of being able to walk outside and see constellations and shooting stars. Maybe it is the popularity of science fiction films and books that promise of galaxies far, far away. Maybe it’s that after first learning of Galileo in school, students can dream of discovering their own planets and solar systems. Whatever the reason, space has always been an intriguing topic for both young and old.

What if we were able to turn our telescopes around and get a closer look at what is happening right below our feet? The folks at NASA have done just that with their Earth Observatory site. I don’t believe I have ever come across a resource that aggregates so much useful information in one easy-to-navigate tool. Teachers, head right for the Experiments tab and give your students interactive ways to study global warming and plant biomes around the world. If you love reading blogs (and I know you do!), check out the Expedition to Siberia blog that offers almost daily updates and pictures of this fascinating trip.

And for those of us who are reluctant to believe things we can’t see, you can watch images of global climate change that reinforce lessons we learn in the classroom.

This is a fascinating site. Go in and take a closer look at the Earth, not as the beautiful blue marble in space, but as the land beneath our feet. – DAVID BARGER

NASA Earth Observatory

MotionMountain.org presents an all online .pdf textbook for your downloading pleasure. You are welcome to use the text as a teaching supplement or for reference. While the text is constantly being updated and is not quite complete, there are over 1400 pages of material available in six sections.

The text itself is well written, and presents the material in a straightforward fashion with tons of figures and illustration. If you use a .pdf reader to view these, you’ll also be able to use the embedded hyperlinks in the text to jump to different sections of the book. This is a great resource for physics teacher, or it might be inspiration for the rest of us to create something so accessible and useful. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Motion Mountain’s Free Physics Textbook

When I left high school, I thought I’d seen the last of physics. What a fool I was. Like the urban legend that you’re never more than six feet from a spider, Physics Life reminded me that powerful scientific principles are at work all around us at all times (I feel a little better about the physics, though).

Physics Life presents students with a cartoon neighborhood consisting of sites like a home, a school, a playground, and a car factory. Exploring each site reveals the physics behind automobile lifts, telephones, swing sets, and all sorts of everyday objects. After reading Physics Life’s brief descriptions, you can click on a link to find the full details. Now you can learn that a laser printer works by creating an electrostatic version of your document.

Physics Life is full of information that will get your students thinking about how physics plays a big part in their lives. Hopefully that will also get them thinking about how their physics homework plays a big part in their GPA. -BILL FERRIS

Physics Life

Next time you start to feel a little long in the tooth, find out Your Age on Other Worlds. Just enter your birthday, and this simple app will tell you your age on each of the planets in our solar system. They still count Pluto, by the way, which is great if you’re feeling especially ancient - my first Plutonian birthday isn’t until October 13, 2226.

Students will get a kick out of learning when their next birthday is on other planets. Chances are they’ll have 3 or 4 of those in the coming year. Back in my day, we got to have candy on our birthdays, so you’re probably in store for a year-long sugar rush.

Your Age on Other Worlds also goes into the physics behind orbital motion, so students will get an understanding of why they’re eleven on one planet and a hundred on another. This is a great tool to enhance your science instruction. Just be on the lookout for any fake IDs from Venus. -BILL FERRIS

Your Age on Other Worlds

Trebuchet isn’t just a stylish font. It’s also a medieval siege engine used to smash castle walls. And now you can let your students play with one in the comforts of your own classroom.

GlobalSpec games presents Trebuchet Challenge, an online game that lets you harness your knowledge of physical laws to fling boulders great distances. The game consists of three stages: distance, accuracy and power. Adjust the mass of your projectile and counterweight, finagle the launch angle, even add a tail wind to send your rock sailing through the sky toward whatever it is you’d like to squash.

Have your students test their accuracy with targets that change after they get hit. See if they can smash a wall in only one turn. Trebuchet Challenge contains about as much destruction as a game can have and still be educational. -BILL FERRIS

Trebuchet Challenge

Related Stuff:
Learn Science and Kill a Few Hours with Launchball

The highlight of my high school chemistry class was watching a video of scientists chucking bricks of potassium into a lake and watching them explode. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can access scientific explosions any time you want to. And if you see only one bit of science shenanigans this month, make it Doctor Doctor.

Like the Diet Coke and Mentos guys, Doctor Doctor episodes look like Mister Wizard meets the Keystone Cops, complete with fast-motion video and old-timey music. Dr. Quickly and Dr. Science harness the destructive powers of science to implode steel drums and make water rockets, and create more complicated projects like a hovercraft powered by a leaf blower. Check out Doctor Doctor and let the hijinks ensue. –BILL FERRIS

Doctor Doctor

Related Stuff:
Make Fun Science Projects by Reading Comics: Howtoons
It’s Not Like This is Rocket Science… Oh, Wait… It Is

Bill Nye the Science Guy returns with a new show, The Eyes of Nye. Though I haven’t yet seen the program, you should definitely visit its accompanying website, which provides facts and background information on topics such as cloning, climate change, and nuclear power. You can also find out more about scientists leading the way in researching each episode’s topic. The site also provides opposing viewpoints on issues such as global warming and alternative fuel sources.

The Eyes of Nye looks like it’s geared toward an older audience than Bill Nye the Science Guy. But don’t worry—though it’s a new show, Nye’s goofiness and trademark bow tie are still intact.—BILL FERRIS

The Eyes of Nye

Every science teacher’s favorite musical jaunt through the periodic table, Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements,” now has an animated video. This fun flash animation gives students a fighting chance at singing along by displaying each element as it’s sung.

At the risk of giving away the ending, animator Mike Stanfill kindly fills in the elements that have been discovered since the song was recorded in 1955, so it covers the complete list of elements. And far be it from us to tell you how to do your job, but any student who can sing this whole song from memory deserves some serious extra credit.

“The Elements” is an oldie but goodie that just got a little goodie-r. These kids nowadays with their rock and roll music could do with a song stuck in their heads that actually teaches them something. –BILL FERRIS

The Element Song