The jumping ring experiment has become central to liquid nitrogen shows given as part of the outreach and open day activities carried out within the University of Bath. The basic principles of the experiment are described as well as the effect of changing the geometry of the rings and their metallurgical state. In general, aluminium rings are…

To find out about the microscopic life in the valuable estuary environment, it is usually necessary to be near the water. This dry lab offers an alternative, using authentic data and a simulation of plankton sampling. From the types of organisms found in the sample, middle school students can infer relationships in the biological and physical…

A simple method based on the moment of forces and Archimedes' principle is described for finding density without measuring the mass and volume of an object. The method involves balancing two unknown objects of masses M[subscript 1] and M[subscript 2] on each side of a pivot on a metre rule and measuring their corresponding moment arms. The object…

This volume contains the following papers: (1) Beyond Computer Literacy: Supporting Youth's Positive Development through Technology (Marina Umaschi Bers); (2) Educational Technology, Reimagined (Michael Eisenberg); (3) Children as Codesigners of New Technologies: Valuing the Imagination to Transform What Is Possible (Allison Druin); (4) Content…

The BioBridge Professional Development model was created to bring current and relevant science into the high school classroom. The purpose of this intervention was to connect teachers with relevant science and to create innovative, hands-on activities that engage students, with the goal of increasing student interest in STEM careers. To this end,…

Operation Magpie was a citizen science project that involved the community in collecting data about magpies. This article describes one aspect of the project from an education perspective. The study began with a collaboration of teacher educators, environmental scientists and a local radio station. After an initial workshop with 75 teachers, three…

Over the past several years, the authors have been developing an instructional technology, called Teachable Agents (TA), which draws on the social metaphor of teaching to help students learn. Students teach a computer character, their "agent," by creating a concept map of nodes connected by qualitative causal links. The authors hypothesize that…

As research shows that the knowledge and use of models and modelling by teachers is limited, particularly for predicting phenomena, we developed and applied a sequence of three representations of a simulated model focusing on polarization and specifically showing the behaviour of an atom, and forces exerted on a dipole and an insulator, when a…

In the activities presented in this article, students mimic real scientists while constructing predictions and scientific explanations about surface currents. The activities are inspired by and couched within true scientific inquiries regarding the ocean and the North American Great Lakes. Students engage in a classroom inquiry and use map-reading…

In this paper, a simple MATLAB-based PC program that enables the computer to function as a replacement for the electronic scalar-counter system associated with a Geiger-Muller (GM) tube is described. The program utilizes the ability of MATLAB to acquire data directly from the computer sound card. The signal from the GM tube is applied to the…

Honeybees, butterflies, and ladybugs all have fascinating mutually beneficial relationships with plants and play important ecosystem roles. Children also love these creatures. But how do we teach children about these symbiotic interactions and help them appreciate their vital roles in our environment? One must is to give children direct experience…

This article reports the development and refinement of science and mathematics integrated activities for middle school students. The expectations of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics that students develop an understanding of mathematics and an ability to apply it gave birth to these activities. The expectations of the National…

Examining data provides a unique opportunity to have students work actively with various technologies, such as computers or graphing calculators. Students can import data into spreadsheet software, execute mathematical calculations, create data graphs, and use this material in reports to present the results of their inquiry. Reinforcing the use of…

Laboratory sessions offer students an opportunity to develop creative problem-solving skills and to better understand the nature of the scientific process through hands-on learning. Unfortunately, traditional procedures are often written in such detail, they require students to do little more than follow step-by-step directions. Under those…

As students watched a compressional pulse bounce back and forth on the horizontally suspended Slinky[TM], shown in Fig. 1, we wrote down the formula for the speed of the pulse and promised that later in the course we would derive the formula. The problem is we did not keep our promise in the course. Here is where we are keeping the promise. As…