Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

If you want to learn about rockets, who better to turn to than NASA? NASA’s Rocketry website covers everything elementary and middle school students want to know about rockets. The site has some serious geek bait, featuring multimedia, virtual rocket-building activities, the history of rocketry, and lesson plans for grades K-8. The site explains the various phases of rocket building and engineering, NASA-sponsored rocketry competitions, and even tells you how to talk like a rocket engineer.

NASA’s Rocketry site is a great starting point for any unit on rockets, engines or space travel, as well as for anyone who just wants to geek out on space ships for a while. Download the educator guide and blast off!

NASA – Rocketry

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Another fabulous site from NASA: Solar Sytem Exploration

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The building of the International Space Station in less that two minutes

It’s Not Like This is Rocket Science… Oh, Wait… It Is

BY REBECCAH HAINES

I have never been a big fan of physics.  I’m more of a biology gal.  However, if I did like physics, or if I were required by law to teach it (which of course, I am), I would definitely check out this website: Physics Central.

I have to admit, despite my lack of enthusiasm for physics, this website is actually…fun. There are engaging pictures, videos, podcasts, and articles.  In addition, there is a physics superhero comic — Spectra, the original laser hero. You can access an online version of her comic book, which is definitely an enticing aspect for a middle school student.

Physics Central packs a lot of content for teachers, but thankfully it is nicely organized at the Educator’s Resource page.  Some notable features include illustrated instructions for experiments, downloadable coloring books, and cool free posters.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Looking for something to spice up your physics class and let your students have a bit of fun at the same time? If so, check out the very cool OE-CAKE physics simulator, a sandbox-style physics program that allows you to see how different physics elements will interact with each other.

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BY REBECCAH HAINES

Now this is what I like in a website name – straightforward, telling you like it is.  There is no doubt as to what you’ll find at Learningscience.org. That’s right, you’ll find websites to help your students learn science.

Essentially, Learningscience.org is a nicely categorized clearinghouse of interactive science websites.  The first choice of categories are: Science Inquiry, Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space, Science and Technology, Science and Society, and The History and Nature of Science.  Savvy science teachers will recognize these categories as the same ones within the National Science Education Standards. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

Ever wondered about the physics behind the slapshot? I haven’t. But after looking at Science of the Olympic Winter Games from NBC Sports and the National Science Foundation, I at least feel guilty about it.

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BY BILL FERRIS

In this week’s by-the-numbers edition, read about the things you need to know before going 1:1, find the best free web-design tutorials, and read the heartwarming story about how the 112th element finally became a real boy got a name. More after the jump.

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BY BILL FERRIS

For this month’s random roundup, we’ve selected the Library of Congress, our nation’s storehouse of pretty much everything worth knowing. As you’d expect, a lot of great resources for teachers have been derived from the Library. See your tax dollars at work by reading the articles linked after the jump.

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BY BILL FERRIS

“Back in my day we didn’t have those fancy calculators,” my dad used to say. “We had to use slide rules.” Which was his way of telling me he wouldn’t be much help with my math homework.

Sure, your math students are probably addicted to their TI-85s, smart phone apps, or online tools like Calc5, but sometimes it’s good to experiment with the tools of days gone by. Now you can make your own circular slide rule by following these directions from the physics department at the University of Montana.

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Perform searches of computational knowledge

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

WolframAlpha is an ambitious knowledge repository that functions similar to a web browser. It’s important to note the difference between a knowledge repository and a search engine — this isn’t a competitor to Google. In fact, it functions as a much different application. The concept is to show useful, relevant information based on your query, not give you a list of links to click on and find the information yourself. For example, if you enter a famous person it gives you a basic breakdown biography, more of a when, where, what response that would put important dates at your fingertips.

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Looking for ideas or resources for your class? MIT Open CourseWare is there to help.  Yes, the same MIT that everyone hopes their engineering-focused little one gets into has created a free and open resource for anyone in the world to use.  It’s not just math and science courses either; MIT has published complete course resources for all the subjects they teach, from history to music and theater arts. (more…)

Check out these upcoming educational grants, as listed on Grant Wrangler.

Samsung Focus on Learning Grant Program — Deadline: June 15
Need a Samsung 850DX document camera? Samsung is giving away 50 of them to educators who can demonstrate a need for them.

Universe Adventure Student Video Contest — Deadline: June 15
The Berkley Center for Cosmological Physics and the Honeywell Corporation will give $1,500 in money and new equipment to the students who can create a YouTube video that “demonstrates one of the key fundamental scientific principles or physical laws that governs cosmology or astrophysics in the universe.”

Thomson Gale TEAMS Award –Deadline: June 15
Thomson Gale and the Library Media Connection will award $2,500 cash to three K-12 public or private school teachers who have collaborated with media specialists in the past school year.

New Science Teacher Academy — Deadline: June 30
Second- and third-year science teachers can become a fellow at the New Science Teacher Academy for one year by winning this grant from the National Science Teacher Association.

Coca-Cola Foundation Education Grants –Deadline: Rolling
Coke will support all kinds of educational causes, including dropout prevention, maintaining water quality, recycling and maintaining access to education programs. Plus there’s no deadline. Take a look at their application guidelines and see what you can propose. -BILL FERRIS

When I first clicked on The Particle Adventure, I expected one of those sci-fi adventures where a group of scientists, one of whom is a beautiful woman, get shrunk to microscopic size to face the perils of the subatomic world.

It’s nothing like that. At all.

While it may not be the harrowing  journey I hoped for, The Particle Adventure does take visitors on a tour of a world only seen through powerful microscopes — or in the case of dark matter, not at all. You can learn about the basic building blocks of matter like quarks and neutrinos, as well as theoretical stuff. Students can also learn what keeps all these tiny marbles from rolling all over the place.

If you like what you see, you can order charts, posters and other educational materials. And if your students don’t recognize any of the terms on the site, a handy glossary will clue them in.

The Particle Adventure also talks about how scientists experiment with particles, including but not limited to particle accelerators and the Large Hadron Collider. I don’t know about you, but I find acceleration and collisions inherently interesting, even when it happens at a subatomic level. If I can’t have a group of tiny scientists shooting lasers as bacteria, at least I can have a few crashes. -BILL FERRIS

The Particle Adventure

Related stuff:

Symmetry Magazine Makes Particle Physics Slightly Less Difficult

They Deafened Me with Science: The Element Song Returns

See the periodic table in context at WebElements

The early buzz about the world wide web was that it would throw open the floodgates of the world’s accumulated knowledge, creating a window into the cultures of the most far-flung places on earth. We instead got lolcats, pop-up ads, and meaningless quizzes about which superhero you are.

Fortunately, some wise folks had an eye on that original idyllic vision all along, and those folks now bring us the World Digital Library. A project of the Library of Congress and UNESCO, the site provides access to high-quality digital scans of primary source materials from all over the world.

These cultural treasures include maps, photographs, manuscripts, audio and video recordings and more, and there’s at least one item from every UNESCO member country. The WDL’s interface is phenomenal, offering beautiful, high-resolution scans with incredible zooming capability. Check out this 18th century Japanese woodblock print; you can zoom in close enough to see individual paper fibers.

The site is also exceptionally easy to navigate — perhaps dangerously so, if you like looking at pretty pictures and are prone to losing track of time. You can browse by place, time, topic, type of item, or contributing institution, and the site is navigable in seven different languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

The possibilities for using the WDL in the classroom are nearly endless: Social studies teachers, obviously, will find a treasure trove of primary source materials, but they can also show works created contemporaneously from around the globe for any era, enabling students to develop a holistic sense of global history. Second-language teachers can have students view culturally significant items in their target language. English language arts teachers can identify exquisite images, audio, and video for use as writing prompts. And the ability to browse by topic provides opportunities for use by those often-neglected STEM teachers: Among the topics to choose from is “natural science and mathematics,” which can be further limited to astronomy, geometry, medicine, physics, etc.

An entry under the topic “mathematical geography” is a 15th-century Egyptian book called A Guide for the Perplexed on the Drawing of the Circle of Projection. Many thanks to the World Digital Library for raising our collective IQ. This is what I always knew the internet could be. -EMILY JACK

World Digital Library

Related stuff:

Visit the Library of Congress online

Access Primary Sources Online with the Perseus Digital Library

Check out ibiblio, the Online Library

Here’s a quick YouTube video that deals with amazing facts about the thing that our world revolved around — the sun. Learn about what causes sun spots, the northern lights, and solar winds. This NASA-produced video is a good introduction to a unit on the solar system. If your school blocks YouTube, just download it to your thumb drive in bring it with you to class. -BILL FERRIS

Secrets of a Dynamic Sun

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Peek into space with Windows on the Universe

Observe Mars in 3D

Ever wonder what’s the lifespan of a flea? Or how sunscreen works? Or who developed the Nobel-worthy invention of the TV dinner?* Of course you haven’t, but that’s not the point. As any person who has won a trivia contest will tell you, it’s fun to show off knowledge of obscure facts in any subject. Like music and sports, science is a subject that lends itself especially well to this sort of trivia. You can find lots of it at Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress.

The site groups its facts into categories like physics, technology, zoology and plant life. Personally, I enjoy browsing through the questions listed on the site and just see what I can learn. Everyday Mysteries is a great place to begin stockpiling questions for a classroom trivia contest, or if you’re in the mood to learn fun facts about a particular topic.  -BILL FERRIS

Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress

Related stuff:

Think you know geography? Take this quiz

* 30-90 days, by combining organic and inorganic active ingredients, and several geniuses, respectively.

Photo credit: mastrobiggo on Flickr.