Many students leave the environmental science classroom with misconceptions centered on the availability of natural resources such as water. This article presents a case study where students assume the roles of various stakeholders and articulate their position on whether or not to pipe water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. Additionally,…

The Bee Hunt! project and curriculum are designed with cultural and environmental sensitivity in mind. In this project, K-12 students develop their awareness and understanding of science and investigate North American pollinator declines. Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators are integrally connected to the pollination of the world's crops for…

The Plate Tectonics Project is a multiday, inquiry-based unit that facilitates students as self-motivated learners. Reliable Web sites are offered to assist with lessons, and a summative rubric is used to facilitate the holistic nature of the project. After each topic (parts of the Earth, continental drift, etc.) is covered, the students will…

All citizens will make bioethics decisions as a result of today's biotechnology revolution. The decisions made require citizens to find possible acceptable solutions to dilemmas that have become public issues. In this activity, students practice making decisions in ethical dilemmas after evaluating the influences of their own ethical beliefs and…

Students examine the bacterial expansion pattern and attempt to relate what they discover to expanding powers of two. They also relate what they see and discover to increasing living space requirements in a world of infinite space and finite space to discover that living space decreases as a function of one over expanding powers of two. The…

A two-dimensional weather map is actually a physical representation of three-dimensional atmospheric conditions at a specific point in time. Abstract thinking is required to visualize this two-dimensional image in three-dimensional form. But once that visualization is accomplished, many of the meteorological concepts and processes conveyed by the…

In this activity students examine burrow casts to learn about burrowing animals and practice their math skills. Students compute the volume and average circumference of a burrow. They also determine whether a relationship exists between burrow volume and the size of the organism that created it. Students use science as inquiry as they analyze and…

Plant tropisms--their directional movement in response to stimuli--are a fundamental concept in plant science and excite students because they are the observable signs of life in plants. Unfortunately, the precollege teaching literature is full of tropism misconceptions. An inexpensive clock clinostat is invaluable for student gravitropism and…