Science in Focus: Energy - Understanding Energy
Energy lights our homes, fuels our transportation systems, and much more, but affordable energy is in limited supply. This workshop for elementary and middle school science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It provides a model lesson that takes a look at the global impact of the limits of our energy sources and examines how being smart about using energy will become more and more important in our daily lives.
Science in Focus: Force and Motion - Drag Races
This workshop for elementary and middle school science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It provides a model lesson that facilitates fifth-grade students' exploration of the physics of motion using plastic cars with strings and washers attached to provide a pulling force. The students test the speed of the vehicles and explain what forces bring the vehicles to a stop when the cars collide with and displace barriers at the end of their run. Finally, the students discuss their findings to help solidify their understanding of the effect of forces on motion.
Science in Focus: Force and Motion - When Rubber Meets the Road
This workshop for elementary and middle school science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It provides a model lesson that allows fifth-grade students to explore force and motion by recording and comparing the distance a vehicle travels under various conditions. Students predict the distance the car will travel by counting the number of twists in the rubber band, and observe the car’s speed as it rolls across the floor. When the force of the rubber band stops acting, the force of friction slows the car to a stop.
Science in Focus: Force and Motion - On a Roll
This workshop for elementary and middle school science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It provides a model lesson that features first-grade students rolling balls of different sizes, masses, and materials down ramps of varying heights in order to compare their speeds. The students then experiment by replacing the ramp with a cardboard tube, and try to determine how the tube must be oriented to allow the ball to roll as it did down the ramp.
Science in Focus: Force and Motion - Keep on Rolling
This workshop for elementary and middle school science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It provides a model lesson that helps first-grade students to build on their prior experience with rolling objects. By designing and constructing their own roller coaster made from ramps, cardboard tubes, and flexible tubes, the students experiment with ways to get a marble from the top of a table into a bucket on the floor some distance away.
Science in Focus: Force and Motion - Force Against Force
This workshop for elementary and middle school science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It provides a model lesson wherein fourth-grade students explore ways to balance the force of magnetism against the force of gravity. A magnet placed in a cup on one side of a pan-balance is stuck to a stationary magnet beneath the cup. The students experiment in order to find out when enough washers will have been placed on the opposite side of the balance in order for the magnets to separate. Graphical analysis shows some unexpected results.
Science in Focus: Shedding Light on Science (K-5) - Shine and Shadow
This workshop for elementary science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in partnership with the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. It provides model activities that introduce students to the idea that light is a form of energy that affects all facets of our lives. In order to understand light, the students explore how shadows are formed, as well as the role of light in seeing. In particular, we examine several big ideas about light through watching second grade students explore light and shadow and view light demonstrations. We also hear fourth grade students talk about how they see light and visit with an astronomer and other experts.
Science in Focus: Shedding Light on Science (K-5) - Laws of Light
This workshop for elementary science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in partnership with the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. It demonstrates model lessons that introduce how light energy interacts with matter and how it has predictable properties that we refer to as reflection and refraction. We then explore what happens to light when it strikes a smooth surface, a rough surface, or a transparent surface. In particular, we examine several big ideas about light through viewing demonstrations with light and mirrors, visiting an artist and an astronomer who use mirrors in their work, watching fifth grade students investigate refraction, and listening to experts talk about light.
Science in Focus: Shedding Light on Science (K-5) - Pigments, Paint, and Printing
This workshop for elementary science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in partnership with the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. It demonstrates model lessons that introduce students to the rich visual world we experience due to the diversity of the colors that surround us. In this segment, students create rainbows and learn how and why these magnificent phenomena occur in the sky. After looking at the Sun's electromagnetic spectrum we examine the reflection and refraction of photons of light and investigate the primary colors of light and pigments. We then explore color televisions and look closely at the pixels which form images.
Science in Focus: Shedding Light on Science (K-5) - Color, Cones, and Corneas
This workshop for elementary science teachers was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in partnership with the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. It provides model lessons that facilitate an investigation into human vision. Students featured in this workshop learn that humans are able to see objects when light energy enters the eye. After holding interviews with the students, we then use models to study the function of the major parts of the human eye and we explore refraction by following the path of light through various lenses. We also visit an optometrist for a vision check-up, a discussion on the perception of color, and to actually see inside a human eye.