In classroom science laboratories, unlike a real science laboratory, the teacher can guide students away from potential dead ends and toward data that are most likely to result in accurate conclusions. Sometimes, though, allowing students to pursue dead ends and to collect "bad" data can provide especially rich learning opportunities.…

This article describes an interdisciplinary unit in which students explore biological "ice nucleation"--by particles that cause water to freeze at temperatures above -38°C--through the lens of the microbial ice nucleator "Pseudomonas syringae." Such This activity, which aligns with the "Next Generation Science…

Carbon is at the heart of many of today's environmental challenges. It is the central element responsible for the structure and function of living systems--taken up by plants through photosynthesis and moving from plants to other organisms, soil, and the ocean and into the atmosphere. The imbalance of these connected biogeochemical…

Many students probably know something about space from playing computer games or watching movies and TV shows. Teachers can expose them to the real thing by launching their experiments into near space on a weather balloon. This article describes how to use high-altitude ballooning (HAB) as a culminating project to a chemistry unit on experimental…

Teachers strive to engage students in rich and varied experiences involving exploration. These experiences should be accessible to all types of learners (e.g., visual, kinesthetic, mathematically inclined), offering multiple pathways for engagement at different levels of sophistication and accommodating both conceptual and computational…

In this article, the authors describe a lesson that uses the 5E Learning Cycle to help students not only understand the atomic model but also how Ernest Rutherford helped develop it. The lesson uses Rutherford's gold foil experiment to focus on three aspects of the nature of science: the empirical nature of science, the tentativeness of scientific…

In this article, the authors provide a brief overview of the emerging field of nanoscience and why it is an important area of education. They next explain the science behind the new nanoparticulate sunscreens, describe the different elements of the unit, and reflect on some of the opportunities and challenges of teaching nanoscience at the high…

This article describes a thought-provoking lesson that compares various arrangements of lamp-battery circuits to help students develop the motivation and competence to participate in scientific discourse for knowledge construction. Through experimentation and discourse, students explore concepts about voltage, current, resistance, and Ohm's law.…

Using examples this article tries to dispel a common misconception that theories "mature" into laws by constant testing and confirmation. (GA)

Many students in introductory science courses at both the secondary and tertiary levels learn science as a miscellaneous collection of facts, concepts, and equations that must be memorized to pass examinations. One way to show students that they actually can "do" science is to have them use an observable event to generate a relationship that can…