Amusement park physics is a no-risk teaching and learning endeavor. Students engage in real-world physics applications requiring no extrinsic motivation other than the opportunity to go to an amusement park. Let’s begin with some not-so-great amusement park rides and the physics that explains them. After that, you will find several online resources you can use before, during or after a visit to the park to reinforce and assess conceptual understanding.

On July 3, 2009, Popularmechanics.com published an article about five theme park rides described as “pushing the limits of common sense.” Each presentation gives a brief description of the ride as well as a photo, and most have an accompanying video clip. The five rides include a waterslide with a perfectly circular loop, a medieval-style human catapult, a zero gravity roller coaster, the world’s first Ferris wheel, and an Alpine slide.

The problem with a perfectly circular loop is that the high g-forces “exerted when entering and exiting the inversion of a perfect circular loop are enough to break a person’s neck.” The human catapult was all good fun, until someone got hurt. In one case, the net meant to catch the projectile-person tore, and in another, a person missed the net altogether, resulting in death. The roller coaster has no reported life-threatening qualities so long as the rider is properly harnessed, just the bonus of temporary zero gravity.

The world’s first Ferris wheel is included for its context. Built in 1893 it was “284 feet tall, with 36 cars capable of holding 60 people a piece (for a total load of 2400 riders). A single revolution took 10 minutes.” One can imagine how people at the time may have reacted to such a novelty. The Alpine slide is a concrete and fiberglass slide people go down while perched on a “sled” with virtually no brakes and no control. If one is ejected, one will endure dangerous and painful skin removal at the least, and broken bones and death at the most.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

To introduce the idea of amusement park physics, consider showing your students one of the video clips from the Popularmechanics.com page. You could first ask: Why do we find amusement park rides attractive? What do they elicit in us? How much is real and how much is perception? What is a catapult? How could the concept be converted to an amusement park attraction? Then show the video.

Have students use appropriate terms and labeled illustrations to articulate ways to design a safer version of the human catapult or other rides. Since the idea is to present the illusion of danger, not actual danger, students will have to stay within the limits of physical laws. For elaboration, they can make scale models and/or provide written explanation of the physics concepts involved.

See the Middle School Portal’s exemplary resources blog for a post titled Physics Fun at the Fair.

Here are additional resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Amusement Park Physics: What are the Forces Behind the Fun?; Playground Physics; Amusement Park Freefall; and Data Collection at the Amusement Park

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We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

Social networks such as Facebook allow people to stay connected or get connected with physically distant persons in ways not otherwise possible. Recent news from Iran exemplifies this concept in ways most of us probably had not imagined. Navid Mansourian works for Facebook and is an Iranian immigrant. He recently wrote a column posted on Facebook regarding the role of Facebook in Iranian protest organization. In it he reports how in 1999 a protest, similar to the most recent one, was successfully suppressed by the government. Mansourian attributes the Iranian people’s lack of access to major media outlets for the government’s successful suppression then. However, he notes that barrier to major media access is now removed. “As soon as my Iranian friends share an update about what’s happening in their country, their friends are amplifying their voice by sharing it outside of the country to their friends, who then can spread it even further.” Thus, persons are empowered to act and affect change in seemingly impossible circumstances.

Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, education policy leaders have worked tirelessly toward an education revolution. Nonetheless, education reform has been disappointingly slow for a bevy of reasons. However, with the example of Iran, perhaps effective educational reform is more imminent. The May issue of Educational Researcher  may be evidence supporting that notion. It is dedicated to the role of Web 2.0 technologies–those that invite and facilitate user participation and interaction–in education and research. The articles and comments explore how these technologies enable knowledge generation, literacy and identity.

For example, educators can easily form, join, and participate in on-line professional learning communities. Teachers can develop lessons inviting student interaction and collaboration in social contexts which contribute to deeper conceptual understandings of content and retention. Parents can monitor and provide feedback regarding student learning activities. But social networking also has its dark side.

News reports of inappropriate content posted to their Facebook page by teachers are not uncommon. For example, see Area teachers post questionable content on Facebook which highlights the findings of a search done on some Florida school districts which turned up some untoward pages of some teachers. When some of those teachers were contacted by the reporter, they reported they thought they had secured their page so that students particularly would not see it.

Cyber socializing differs from real socializing in that on the web we cannot control who is accessing what portion of our personal profile when, as we can in person. In person, we align our social interaction with others depending on our relationship with them, whether they are friends, relatives, colleagues or prospective clients. Unless you consciously adjust your settings, you are not making these distinctions on-line. A NYTimes.com article, On Networking Sites, Learning How Not to Share provides some guidance on how you can adjust your privacy settings for Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn–a professional networking social site.

Middle School Portal 2 (MSP2) http://www.msteacher2.org/Math & Science Portal project has started our own social network - please visit the site and consider joining one of the groups and participating in a discussion.

How Does an iPod Affect a Polar Bear?

Photo courtesy of Amanda Graham (Yukon White Light) via Flickr.

When we talk about the problems of global climate change, we tend to focus on cars and coal-burning power plants as major contributors. Yet there are other significant players, including consumer electronics. The number of cell phones, MP3 players, laptops, and flat-screen TVs is increasing rapidly, and not just in wealthier nations. It is estimated that one in nine people in Africa has a cell phone - and those numbers are expected to continue growing.

A recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that new devices such as MP3 players, cell phones, and flat-screen TVs will triple energy consumption. Two hundred new nuclear power plants would be needed just to power all the TVs, iPods, PCs, and other devices expected to be used by 2030.

For example, consider televisions. The IEA estimates that 2 billion TVs will soon be in use across the world (an average of 1.3 TVs for every household with electricity). TVs are also getting bigger and being left on for longer periods of time. IEA predicts a 5 percent annual increase in energy consumption between 1990 and 2030 from televisions alone.

While consumer electronics is the fastest growing area, it is also the area with the least amount of policies to control energy efficiency. Total greenhouse gas emissions for electronic gadgets is currently at about 500 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. If nothing is done, the IEA estimates that the figure will double to about 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030. However, the agency says that existing technologies could reduce this figure by 30-50 percent at little cost. Allowing consumers to regulate energy consumption based on the features they actually use, minimum-performance standards, and easy-to-read energy labels can help consumers make smarter energy choices about their personal electronics.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

This story connects to two National Science Education Standards domains: Science and Technology and Science in Personal and Social Perspectives. The Science and Technology content standard states:

Technological solutions have intended benefits and unintended consequences. Some consequences can be predicted, others cannot.

The Science in Personal and Social Perspectives content standard includes resource use and depletion, human-induced and naturally occurring hazards, and science and technology in society.

Ask students to consider electronic gadgets – cell phones, digital cameras and video cameras, MP3 players, flat-screen TVs, laptops, and so forth. Have students brainstorm the benefits of these devices. Easier communication, access to data, entertainment, and mobility will probably come up. Then ask students to brainstorm “costs” or negative characteristics. Expense will certainly be mentioned, but will the energy cost?

If you have access to an electric power monitor such as a Kill-a-Watt, you can have students plug in different gadgets and compare power consumption. This simple activity can give rise to a number of inquiry-based investigations, such as: What’s the most energy-efficient MP3 player?; Do laptops and desktops consume the same amount of power?; Does screen size (on an MP3, cell phone, laptop, or TV) affect power consumption?; and so on.

Share some of the figures from the IEA report with students. Discuss the idea that making technology (cell phones, laptops and Internet access) available to more people is a good thing, but there are intended and unintended consequences. Greater access to technology enables widespread communication and promotes education, but also requires more energy – most of which comes from fossil fuels. Burning those fossil fuels releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change and causing Arctic sea ice decline. So all those iPods do impact polar bears after all.

Rather than leave students discouraged, present them with a challenge. Remind them of the many benefits of technology and acknowledge that electronic gadget use will continue to grow rapidly. How can science and technology address the unintended environmental consequences of these tools? Assign small groups of students a particular piece of technology and have them brainstorm ideas that would promote energy efficiency – either on the part of the consumer or the manufacturer, or both. Have groups present their solutions to the class and discuss them. What common solutions were raised? What can students and their families do now to use their electronic devices in a responsible manner?

Here are some related resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Energy Sources, The Power of Electricity, Polar Bears and Climate Change. The October 2008 issue of the free online magazine Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears included articles about natural resources, the NEED project, and energy efficiency activities for home and school. The U.S. Department of Energy’s web site includes links to energy efficiency and conservation lesson plans at a variety of grade levels.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

How many species were described for the first time in the literature in 2007? Five hundred? 1,000? 10,000? Would you believe 18, 516? That’s right, in a single calendar year! “The majority of the 18,516 species described (named) in 2007 were invertebrate animals (75.6 percent), vascular plants (11.1 percent) and vertebrates (6.7 percent),” reports ScienceDaily.com in the story Pea-sized Seahorse, Bacteria That Live in Hairspray, Caffeine-free Coffee Among Top 10 New Species of 2008.

The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University is the organization that keeps track of this information. In addition, an international group of taxonomists named a top 10 list as part of their State of Observed Species (SOS) report. The report is part of a public awareness campaign and the top 10 are chosen for their interest level. The ScienceDaily story lists and describes the top 10 for 2008. See http://species.asu.edu/SOS for access to both 2008 and 2009 SOS reports in pdf. See http://species.asu.edu/Top10 for this year’s top 10 list, with photos and links to more information regarding each species. Also shown on that page is a world map, indicating where in the world the top 10 species were found.

In the ScienceDaily story, Carolus Linnaeus, founder of our modern classification system, is also referenced: “The 300th anniversary of his birth on May 23 was celebrated worldwide in 2007. Last year marked the 250th anniversary of the beginning of animal naming.” The publication of the top 10 list is meant to coincide with his birthday.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

Here we connect to two National Science Education Standards domains: Life Science and Science as Inquiry. The species described cut across all domains of the taxonomic system. The science of taxonomy uses a variety of particular methods to arrive at the final verdict in classifying an organism, though not always with unanimous agreement. Thus, scientific evidence and argumentation are necessary.

You can begin class discussion with the same question that opened this blog entry: How many species were described for the first time in the literature in 2007? If that number has been fairly steady for past 10 years, what can you infer regarding the number of species on the planet?

You have probably already had some lessons in classification. You can connect to those lessons with these questions: What is taxonomy? Why does it matter? Who was Carolus Linnaeus?

Before sharing the top 10 list with students, ask a few of these questions: How small is the smallest sea horse? Snake? Are there bacteria in hairspray? How long is the longest bug? Can fossils be classified just as living things are? Can you grow caffeine-free coffee beans?

Have students reflect. Does the number of species described in 2007 surprise you? Why do you think you never thought it could be so high? Which of the top 10 species are you most impressed by? Explain why. Have students write out their reaction to the statement below in complete sentences, providing evidence and support for their reaction:

Thousands of species may be going extinct each year, before they ever are discovered and described.

The following are some related resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Carnivorous Plants; Taxonomy: Classification of Life; and Have You Seen an Arthropod Lately?

 We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

It’s that bittersweet time of the school year. The good news is the end is near, and the sad news is the end is near! You and your students have worked hard both academically and socially and some strong bonds have developed. Take full advantage of the understanding, trust and respect you now have with your students. You are all perfectly positioned for activities that will help students review the year’s major concepts and forge new understandings between and among the concepts–often perceived as discrete and unrelated–through positive social interaction.

Here are some activities that will allow students the movement and social interaction they crave this time of year, while enabling them to further clarify and solidify their knowledge of science concepts.

Science A to Z

http://sciencespot.net/Media/ScienceAtoZChall2.pdf

Use the pdf as is, or create your own using terms from your science course. Students can work in teams to promote social construction of knowledge.

Dichotomous Key

http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Science/Process_Skills/SPS0002.html

Was the concept of dichotomous key in your curriculum this year? Multitask by having students review the concept at the same time they become familiar with a new group of living things. What group of living things did you not get to introduce to your students for lack of time? Provide students with images of organisms in that group and have the students create a key for them.

Film Canister Fun: Science Skills

http://sciencespot.net/Pages/classgen.html#Anchor-sillysci

Want to review the skills of observation, inference, hypothesizing, induction and deduction? Scroll down the Science Spot page to find teacher Judy Flaherty’s simple but effective activity.

Super Scientists Challenge

http://sciencespot.net/Pages/classgen.html#Anchor-sillysci

This activity is also found by scrolling down the Science Spot page. Here you can review the major historical scientists students have been introduced to this year or in past years. Several handouts, keys, and suggestions for variations are provided.

Measuring a Solid

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/middle-school-math-science/2009/04/15/measuring-a-solid/

This post from the blog Exemplary Resources for Middle School Math and Science lists several possible activities. However, the first one, Keeping Cool: When Should You Buy Block Ice or Crushed Ice?, will allow students to review scientific thinking and science skills in general, as well as the concepts of surface area and volume and their relationships.

Energy Kids Page

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/whatsenergy.html

Did your curriculum include a unit on energy? This home page contains a summary of forms of energy and energy sources. Click on the Fun and Games page for engaging, quick review activities.

Rader’s Chem4Kids Chemistry Quiz

http://www.chem4kids.com/extras/quiz_chemistry/index.html

Here are some fundamental, multiple-choice questions. Have students work in groups to not only collaboratively decide the correct answer but to also provide justification as to why it’s correct and the others are not. Rader’s has similar quizzes for every major science discipline: Astronomy Quiz; Biology Quiz; Earth Science Quiz; Physics Quiz

Concept Maps

http://www.conceptmapping.com/Examples/Inspiration#Science

Creating an accurate and thorough concept map requires students to think deeply and enables them to demonstrate conceptual understanding. This page from Inspiration Software contains examples. You can provide students with a list of terms/dates/names, or they can brainstorm their own list related to a particular unit. Then they work in teams to collaboratively construct their map, either on the computer or in hard copy, making sure each item has a minimum of two connections to other items and, most importantly, the relationship between the connected terms is explained in writing along the arrows that connect terms. You could give each team a different unit to map, then have the teams connect their maps into one large one, illustrating the relatedness of all science concepts! Bonus points or extrinsic rewards can be given for artistry to encourage those with art skills to participate fully.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

Forensic science is always interesting to students. The mystery and puzzle solving are hard to resist. Here’s a real case you can use to get students thinking scientifically while integrating knowledge of insect life cycles—a timely topic for spring. The NYtimes.com reports how the unsolved cause of death of a woman in Las Vegas was solved based on insect life cycles in this story, The Truth, Revealed by Bugs: The Case of Brookey Lee West.

The graphic from the National Institutes of Health (credited to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History), illustrates how the blow fly is a natural clock telling the time of death, since they lay eggs in a body within 24 hours of the body’s death. In this case, no blow flies were found, indicating that either the time of death was during a season when blow flies are absent or that the person was still alive when they were shoved into a trash can in a storage garage. This evidence and subsequent inference contradicted the victim’s daughter’s story regarding the death. This contradiction then led to suspicion that the daughter was guilty of murder.

While no blow flies were found, scuttle flies were. See Decomposition: What Happens to the Body After Death for details on this insect’s life cycle and behavior as related to solving murder mysteries.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

Here we connect to two National Science Education Standards domains: Life Science and Science as Inquiry. Present the scenario to students as perhaps hypothetical. Friends and neighbors of a woman in Las Vegas notice that they have not seen her much recently. Her daughter tells them her mother has gone to California to stay with the woman’s son. Some people wondered if there was more to this story, since it was known that the mother was an alcoholic and the daughter and mother did not always get along.

Some three years later, the woman’s body is found stuffed in a garbage can in a storage unit in Las Vegas. Upon this discovery the daughter admits to putting the body there after her mother died of natural causes and she panicked, she didn’t know what else to do.

Ask students if there is any way to determine if the daughter is telling the truth. They’ll have some creative ideas including a lie detector test or administering a truth serum. Students could be asked to research those for their reliability.

Ask students if they know what happens to a body in nature. What happens when a deer or raccoon dies? Do they suppose there are any patterns in body decomposition? Such as? They might mention dehydration or bacteria or fungal growth and activity. Are there more easily observed organisms that move in? With enough cues, they should be able to mention flies. What do flies do then? Why are they attracted to the body? They lay eggs, reproduce. You could review a generalized insect life cycle with students. See this page from University of Wisconsin Entomology department for a nice graphic and written explanation: http://manduca.entomology.wisc.edu/about/lifecycle.html.

So what would the environmental conditions have to be to allow for the flies to move in? Well it wouldn’t be below freezing out, and they would need access to the body. Is there only one species of fly? No. Have them collect information on the two species mentioned here, the blow fly and the scuttle fly. The NIH page, Visible Proof: Technologies contains an informative slide show specific to blow flies and forensics. The Australian Museum has a nice page on scuttle flies, http://www.deathonline.net/decomposition/corpse_fauna/flies/coffin.htm.

Finally, tell them that when the body was examined, there was no evidence of blow flies, however scuttle flies were found. What could be inferred regarding season of and/or place of death? Was the daughter telling the truth regarding a natural cause of death? How do they know?

The following are some related resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Forensic Science Under the Microscope; Animals of the World (click on “insects and arachnids”); and Science Sampler: Forensic Metrics.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

Every middle school student has heard of the flu. They may even have had it, or more likely, they have had some other virus described as the flu. Most students would consider the flu unpleasant, but probably not potentially fatal. Now is a good time to help students learn more about influenza. But where do you start? I have put together some highly regarded resources on the web, designed to provide you with 1) solid background knowledge and 2) a variety of teaching resources.

A study of influenza aligns well with the Science in Personal and Social Perspectives,  Science as Inquiry, and Life Science standards of the National Science Education Standards as well as the notion of systems thinking. Perhaps the best pedagogical approach would be to start with personal and social perspectives. That way we start with the somewhat familiar and then bridge to the unfamiliar, more abstract notions of virus and epidemiology.

What Is the Flu?

Open this question up to the class and record all student responses on the board or, better yet, chart paper that can be saved and revisited later. The responses can serve as a pre-assessment or benchmark. Do not pass any judgment or offer any corrective feedback at this point. When students have run out of ideas, tell them it’s time to do a little research to find out whether what they know is accurate and complete.

Is It a Cold or the Flu?

http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Flu/PDF/sick.pdf

Begin with this concise PDF from the National Institutes of Health. Page 2 is a Spanish version. Most students will be able to relate to the listed symptoms. While both colds and the flu are caused by a virus, they are distinctly different. Is vomiting or nausea on the list? Are antibiotics listed as a treatment? Do students want to revise their chart paper list?

History and Society: What Is a Pandemic?

Below are three articles, all published up to four years before the recent swine flu outbreak, that will familiarize you with the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. You may choose to use one of these, in perhaps a modified form, to help students get a concept of pandemic, its impact on society, and what was learned from it.

1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no01/05-0979.htm

Spanish Flu of 1918: Could It Happen Again?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AvianFlu/story?id=1183172

The 1918 Flu Killed Millions. Does It Hold Clues for Today?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/science/28flu.html

The Science of Influenza

These resources will familiarize you with the more technical aspects of a virus, how the body responds, and how antiviral drugs work. You will recognize the puzzle-solving aspect of science. Observations inspire hypotheses, which are tested and tweaked as more observations are gathered.

Epidemic!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/lost/lesson3.html

This simple simulation illustrates how quickly a virus spreads and how scientists use observations to track its origin.

The Big Picture Book of Viruses

http://www.virology.net/Big_Virology/BVRNAortho.html

This site contains more information than almost anyone would want. However, scroll down to see several electron micrographs of various influenza strains.

Image of bacteria cell covered in viruses

http://www.washington.edu/alumni/partnerships/biology/200710/images/kerr_ecoli2.jpg

Although this is not an image of a flu virus attacking a human cell, it does give the viewer the sense of scale — that viruses are much smaller than bacteria. Be mindful that bacteria are, in turn, much smaller than our body cells.

Antibodies Neutralize Multiple Flu Strains

http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/march2009/03022009flustrains.htm

This March 2009 page from the National Institutes of Health reports:

Two separate scientific teams have discovered antibodies that attach to a vulnerable region in a broad range of influenza A viruses, including the H5N1 avian virus, the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, and seasonal H1N1 flu viruses. The finding could potentially help scientists develop tools to prevent or treat the flu during an outbreak or pandemic

Antiviral Drugs and H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu)

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/antiviral.htm

We know that antibiotics don’t work against bacteria, and up until recently we were told there was nothing we could do about viral infections but wait them out. In April of this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described the benefits of some antiviral drugs: “There are four influenza antiviral drugs approved for use in the United States (oseltamivir, zanamivir, amantadine and rimantadine). The swine influenza A (H1N1) viruses that have been detected in humans in the United States and Mexico are resistant to amantadine and rimantadine . . .”

What Is the Swine Flu?

These resources focus on the current H1N1 strain.

A labeled, schematic image of the influenza virus

http://blog.newsweek.com/photos/levelup/images/original/Diagram-of-the-influenza-virus_2C00_-courtesy-Chris-Bickel_2F00_Science.aspx

Q&A: Why Is Swine Flu Such a Big Deal?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30423369/

This article points out that this particular strain is killing young, otherwise healthy people. Contrast that with the fact that older people and very young children are more often victims of the flu, most dying of pneumonia. That is cause for concern.

H1N1 (Swine Flu)

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/index.htm

The official page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with updated confirmed cases and their locations. A discussion with students of the science of epidemiology would be appropriate here.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

Thirty, twenty-nine, maybe thirty-two? How many days until we start our summer break? If you have a fabulous summer vacation planned, you are probably aware of the exact number! Maybe you plan on hiking one of the U.S. national parks or rafting a wild river. Or perhaps your plans take you to more exotic locales like a tropical rainforest, a coral reef, or a glacier.

In any event, how much thought have you given to the environmental impact of your plans and those of everyone else you’ll meet there? What kind of carbon emissions are you emitting as you jet to your destination? What about that four-wheel drive vehicle you’ll rent? And the convenience meals with their excess packaging you’ll eat a greater proportion of?

The growing industry called ecotourism is all about awareness of environmental impact. A recent NYtimes.com article, Growth of Eco-Tourism Raises Concerns, describes the paradox associated with the concept.

“I think it’s fair to say that ‘sustainable tourism’ is an oxymoron,” said Auden Schendler, the executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co. in Colorado and the author of a new book Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution.

Other topics discussed in the article include policy, such as regulation of tourism in the Antarctic to minimize impact, as suggested by Hilary Clinton, U.S. secretary of state, at a recent international conference. The article also points out that ecotourism is responsible for raising awareness regarding conservation, as ironic as that may be.

The impact of rather dense ecotourism on macaques in China is documented in an article from National Geographic News. The presence of humans and the food they put out to attract the macaques contributed to increased violence and infanticide among the animals. The same article reports that while the macaques are negatively impacted by ecotourism, Rwandan gorillas were most likely saved from extinction by ecotourism.

The difference in impacts is due to many variables, but probably the most important are (1) the number of humans allowed to view the gorillas, a couple hundred a year, vs. a couple hundred a day for macaques, and (2) the acclimation process used with the gorillas to get them comfortable with a few humans around. No such process is implemented with the macaques.

So the debate regarding the value of ecotourism and the accompanying oxymoron it represents is not likely to end soon. As individuals, we have a responsibility to be conscious of our actions and take the path of least impact whenever possible.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

The following suggested activity will take about a regular class period. It reinforces science skills of classification and scientific argumentation. It raises personal awareness of one’s place in the natural world and the reflexive relationships among all beings and things on the planet. Thus at least two content standards of the National Science Education Standards are manifested: Science as Inquiry and Science in Personal and Social Perspectives. Students must remain civil and focused on the subject of discussion, while refraining from comments directed at persons.

Over their school careers, students occasionally take a special trip with their family or with a school organization. You can orally survey kids and create a list on the board of places they have been, how they got there, and what they did while they were there.

Ask students to categorize the trips, putting the trips into at least two groups, maybe even three or four, depending on what criteria they decide to use to classify. Help them make the categories mutually exclusive if possible. Some possibilities are: visit relatives, outdoor recreation, education, or sports and entertainment, including professional sports events and theme parks. But allow the students to come up with names of categories, rather than making suggestions for them.

Then tell students you are imposing another criterion: environmental impact. Ask students what you might mean by that. Then have them rank their existing categories from most to least  environmental impact. Expect a lot of discussion and debate with this one! Have students elaborate on their reasoning and provide support and evidence for their rankings. Finally, as a means of reflection and assessment, you could have students respond briefly to the following prompts: “This is what I understand ecotourism is . . . ” and “My thoughts on vacationing have changed some in the following way . . . .”

Note: An Internet search using the term “ecotourism” pulls up a number of interesting links including the web site of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), mentioned in the NYTimes.com article, and an article from Conservation International on ecotourism.

The following are some related resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Beyond Polar Bears and Penguins: Polar News and Notes Antarctic Tourism and The National Caves Association Welcomes You.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

Did it sneak up on you again this year? Kidding aside, Richter Scale Day is April 26, the birthday of Charles Richter (1900-1985), inventor of the Richter scale. Most middle school science curricula include earth science studies in plate tectonics and its related phenomena, including earthquakes. Catastrophic events, such as the recent Italian earthquake, provide teachable moments. What better time to integrate a study of the Richter scale technology with science content?

On April 13, NYTimes.com posted the story Earthquakes’ Many Mysteries Stymie Efforts to Predict Them. The story reports not only the various unreliable methods of quake predicting but also the ways humans can induce quakes. Did you know that a man-made reservoir may have been the cause of a quake in China that killed 80,000 people? Or that a geothermal project in Switzerland has been halted because it was suspected of causing earthquakes?

Although we seem to have some knowledge of what causes earthquakes and even how to measure their intensity, there is no reliable way of predicting quakes — but it’s not for lack of trying.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

In honor of Charles Richter’s birthday, have students research the Richter scale. This concise page from the U.S. Geological Survey is helpful: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/topics

You may need to provide additional instruction regarding logarithmic scale. It is important that students understand that the difference between a 5- and a 6-level quake is not just a single unit; the difference is 10x! Or that the difference from 6 to 6.5 is not a half a unit, but 5x. Here’s a good refresher for you: http://www.astro.northwestern.edu/labs/m100/logs.html

Here is a resource intended for grades 6-12. You may find it helpful for your own content knowledge, and you will be able to modify activities to suit your students’ needs and abilities. It is a teaching box, or unit, called Living With Earthquakes and produced by the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE).

The BBC has several video clips from the recent Italian earthquake. Some of these include computer graphics explaining why Italy has many earthquakes. You may be surprised by what you learn here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7986352.stm

The following are some related resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: Seismic Waves; Observe Animations of Earthquake Waves; Plate Tectonics; and Plate Tectonics: Moving Middle School Students

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? Do you have a favorite activity that you would like to share? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back each week for our newest post or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal science publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org

It is estimated that 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide comes from the manufacture of cement. Some clever manufacturers are finding ways to not only reduce the carbon footprint of the industry but possibly reverse it! That is to say, it seems possible to capture CO₂ and store it in concrete, i.e. sequester it, thus reducing the amount of atmospheric CO₂, a green house gas which contributes to global warming.

A story from the NYTimes.com, Concrete Is Remixed with Environment in Mind, compares the process of making concrete from cement to following a recipe that can be tweaked. The story describes the kinds of modifications being tested and their effects in terms of CO₂ emissions. To understand how these variations work, one should understand that the making of concrete from mixing water and cement is not simply a dehydration process. Rather, the water in the cement is a reactant, which is consumed during chemical reactions. These reactions chemically alter the mixture such that strength and durability are achieved.

One variation enables the cement to flow better and reduces the amount of water needed; another speeds up the reactions so the concrete is ready for use faster. In Minneapolis, the concrete in the new I-35W bridge contains titanium dioxide, which in sunlight chemically reacts to break down organic air pollutants and “bleach” them, giving the concrete a bright, white appearance. The story includes a photo of the bridge.

But what does CO₂ have to do with all this? According to the Times article, “About a ton of CO₂ is emitted for every ton of cement produced. The basic manufacturing process involves burning limestone and other minerals at about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit to create an intermediate product called clinker.” Some entrepreneurs see an opportunity to fill a market niche: make a concrete that can sequester, or store, CO₂. Here are two approaches described in the article:

Novacem, a British startup, is developing a cement that does not use carbonates and can make concrete that absorbs carbon dioxide. . . . At a site adjacent to a gas-fired electricity generation plant in Moss Landing, Calif., the Calera Corporation is developing a process to bubble power plant flue gases [emissions from burning coal, for example] through seawater or other brackish water, using the CO₂ in the gases to precipitate carbonate minerals for use as cement or aggregates in concrete. The process mimics, to some extent, what corals and other calcifying marine organisms do.

In the article’s multimedia offerings, there is a link to a six-minute podcast, an interview with the article’s author, Henry Fountain. In the interview, Fountain recaps some of the facts and processes described in the article, providing good reinforcement for the reader or an alternative to reading for those with reading disabilities.

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

An investigation into the concrete industry connects to the Physical Science and Science and Technology content standards of the National Science Education Standards. It also provides an excellent avenue for connecting to real-world issues.

Ask students: What would your life/world be like in the absence of concrete? Allow them plenty of time with this one. Then ask what is concrete; where does it come from; how long have people been using it; how is it made? What’s the difference between cement and concrete? Where in the world would you suspect the greatest amount of concrete manufacturing is occurring? Did they guess China? The Three Gorges Dam is just the tip of the iceberg there.

Can students imagine that the making of concrete emits tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Can they imagine that the making of concrete could be a solution to both reducing greenhouse gases and consuming waste materials from other manufacturing processes?

For some lessons focused on these kinds of questions, see the lesson plans on the Portland Cement Association web site: Lesson 1: The Uses of Concrete; Lesson 2: What are the Parts of Concrete?; Lesson 3:A Further Look at the Content of Concrete; Lesson 4: A Collection of Aggregates; Lesson 5: So, You Think Concrete Dries Out?

Here’s a related article published April 22, 2009, after the original date of this blog post, Restrictions sought for Cement Plants, also from the NYtimes.com.

The following are some related resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal: The Civil Engineer: A Day in the Life; Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change: and What Is the Carbon Cycle?