Guided-inquiry lab activities with bean beetles ("Callosobruchus maculatus") teach students how to develop hypotheses, design experiments, identify experimental variables, collect and interpret data, and formulate conclusions. These activities provide students with real hands-on experiences and skills that reinforce their understanding of the…

Piezoelectric actuators (or piezoactuators) are known for their nanoresolution and high-speed positioning capabilities. Therefore, they are used in scanning probe microscopes and in the design of innovative surgical tools and biomedical devices. The expected growth of engineering jobs in the nano- and bio-related fields, in which piezoactuators…

Students learn about physical laws and the scientific method when they analyze experimental data in a laboratory setting. Three common sources exist for the experimental data that they analyze: (1) "hands-on" measurements by the students themselves, (2) electronic transfer (by downloading a spreadsheet, video, or computer-aided data-acquisition…

An experiment in chemical kinetics as part of our Discovery Chemistry curriculum is described. Discovery Chemistry is a pedagogical philosophy that makes the laboratory the key center of learning for students in their first two years of undergraduate instruction. Questions are posed in the pre-laboratory discussion and assessed using pooled…

The polygraph (lie detector) may be an ideal vehicle for converting aspects of a physiology course into an interdisciplinary course, enabling discussion of interrelationships between science, technology and society (STS) and social dilemmas arising from technological developments. The authors present a way of incorporating the polygraph into a…

Members of a team of educators and university students participating in the project, Pittsburgh Partnership for Energizing Science in Urban Schools, addressed the issue of helping students develop investigative skills within the context of an introductory science unit for fourth graders. The unit focuses on data-collection techniques and is a…

The first section of this guide contains detailed instructions on how to stage a Microscopic Explorations Festival and an overview of learning station activities that can be used during such an event. The main section of this guide provides concise instructions for setting up each of the festival stations. For each station there is an overview,…

This book approaches the development of science fair projects from the point of view that science should be enjoyable, interesting, and thought-provoking. The scientific concepts introduced here will later help young students to understand more advanced scientific principles. These projects develop skills such as classification, making measured…

Science process skills such as observing, classifying, inferring, interpreting, predicting, and hypothesizing can all be classified as a sub category of thinking skills. This book is part of the series "Strategies for Learning" that focuses on the step-by-step development and application of thinking skills as a vehicle for learning science. The…