More than once in the past year and a half, newscasts from the sites of fatal coal mine accidents have riveted the nation’s attention. Recently, the New York Times reported on an investigator’s findings that a federal agency failed to conduct required safety inspections in many U.S. coal mines during this time.
We can assume that […]

Will we ever find a suitable, sustainable, and reliable substitute for fossil fuels? Sure, there’s wind, water, or solar power, but these sources are dependent on the conditions of nature and are not always reliable. ScienceDaily reported, on November 3, 2007, that two microbiologists, Rhonda Zeltwanger and Michael Cotta at Washington University in St. […]

Uncertainty in science? Is that normal? Of course it is, and researchers can typically quantify the degree of certainty they hold in their conclusions. For example, a research report might read, “Our data analysis indicates with 95% certainty that X is causing Y.” But some research results are not so linear and one-dimensional as […]

Science Daily reported on Sunday, October 14, that a 3.0 magnitude earthquake hit Israel. This would be hardly worth noting except that two similar earthquakes have been recently recorded in the same area. According to the article, “such seismic activity appears to indicate a more disastrous quake is imminent.” Two scientists recounted the history of […]

It sounds like the plot of a black-and-white, sci-fi B-movie: Rural residents hear a steadily increasing loud noise that crescendoes into an explosion, after which they find an “object, metallic in nature, created a crater 41 feet in diameter [and 16 feet deep] and produced a seismic shock equivalent to a 1.5-magnitude earthquake. . . […]

Looking for a timely and concise way to integrate the grades 5-8 National Science Education Standards into a study of the impact of acid rain? Read on!
Middle school students have probably heard of “acid rain” and know it to be a bad thing. They might even know it comes from nitrogen and sulfur compounds emitted […]