Structure and Properties of Matter

In this activity, leads the students in understanding of half- life,  exponential radioactive decay and how to find the age of the rocks by creating and interpreting a graphs.  Students simulate radioactive decay of Ar-K with kernels and po ...

In this lesson, students understand what polymers are and the role that they play in their everyday life. After gaining the initial understanding of polymers, students create and test a polymer (silly putty) to reinforce understanding of polymers. St ...

This resource is a short performance assessment, adapted from Stanford University’s SNAP project to provide NGSS- aligned assessment on HS-PS1-3. Students are given a scenario, where they have to find out the best salt to prevent ice from formi ...

The phenomenon from the video (9-33s)  involves charging a styrofoam plate by rubbing a cloth on it. This charged plate is repelled by another styrofoam plate and slides to the side when stacked on top of this plate. At the same time, this charg ...

This review focuses on the lab activity identified in a series of lessons that explore the basic characteristics of polymers through the introduction of two polymer categories: thermoplastics and thermosets. In the lab activity, students act as engin ...

The demonstration featured in this blog and video presents a puzzle for students to explain observations of the difference in behavior of four balloons - three filled with helium and the final one with air - when cooled in liquid nitrogen. Students ...

This review focuses on the Sugar Fermentation lab resources contributed by MIT (see Vernier Manuals and Lab Extensions section for links to the lab activities and teacher guide at http://goo.gl/q5HkWn). The Sugar Fermentation Lab utilizes gas pressu ...

Part 1 of the X-ray Spectroscopy Unit from NASA’s Imagine the Universe! lesson plans includes a series of three lessons on the formation of elements in stars. During this three lesson series, students learn about the life cycle of stars and model th ...

The article, from the American Chemical Society’s October 2012 edition of ChemMatters, introduced graphene, an allotrope of carbon. Graphene provides an opportunity for students to examine how the molecular level structure of a material is important ...

This lesson plan (pages 14-15 of the Water Basic Lesson Plan) provides teacher guidelines for using 3-D water and ethanol molecule models to explain water’s surface tension property that results from the polar nature of the molecules by comparison wi ...

Ideas for how to flip your classroom as well as links to note files and video files for AP Chemistry and Honors Chemistry classes are included in the powerpoint.

Have students create a procedure and materials list to separate a mixture of common substances based on physical properties

From TeachEngineering - Students make two different formulations of imitation Silly Putty with varying degrees of cross-linking. They witness how changes in the degree of cross-linking influence the putty properties.

The heart of this activity is a laboratory investigation that models the production of silicon. Students learn about silicon and its sources, uses, properties, importance in the fields of photovoltaics (solar cells/renewable energy) and integrated ci...

This fuel cell animation demonstrates how a fuel cell uses hydrogen to produce electricity, with only water and heat as byproducts. The animation consists of four parts - an introduction, fuel cell components, chemical process, and fuel cell stack.

This interactive diagram from the National Academy of Sciences shows how we rely on a variety of primary energy sources (solar, nuclear, hydro, wind, geothermal, natural gas, coal, biomass, oil) to supply energy to four end-use sectors (residential, ...

This is an interactive table with a comprehensive list of 29 greenhouse gases, their molecular structures, a chart showing a time series of their atmospheric concentrations (at several sampling sites), their global warming potential (GWP) and their ...

This activity comes at the beginning of a sequence of activities in an energy module. Students observe the transfer of solar energy to different appliances with a solar cell and then they investigate the effect of using different solar sources to s...

This video reviews key points as well as pros and cons of nuclear power.

For this lesson, the guiding Concept Question is: What is climate change and how does climate relate to greenhouse gas concentrations over time? This activity is the second lesson in a nine-lesson module 'Visualizing and Understanding the Science of...

This visualization shows the molecular interaction of infrared radiation with various gases in the atmosphere. Focus is on the interaction with C02 molecules and resultant warming of the troposphere.

This animation allows students to explore the infrared spectra of greenhouse gases and depict the absorption spectra. Vibrational modes and Earth's energy spectrum can also be overlaid.

From TeachEngineering - Student groups construct simple conductivity probes and then integrate them into two different circuits to test the probe behavior in solutions of varying conductivity (salt water, sugar water, distilled water, tap water). The...

From TeachEngineering - Students build a saltwater circuit, which is an electrical circuit that uses saltwater as part of the circuit. Students investigate the conductivity of saltwater, and develop an understanding of how the amount of salt in a sol...

The goal of the Phase Change virtual labs is to allow students to investigate into the phases of matter. Students conduct experiments to learn how temperature impacts the boiling and melting points of water.