In this paper, we discuss a simple apparatus and accompanying class activity that we have developed to illustrate the Biot-Savart law. Since students in introductory electricity and magnetism courses often find this law a mathematical mystery, we feel that a simple experiment such as this will provide the students a better understanding of the…

In this laboratory activity, students are introduced to the synthesis of an albendazole metabolite obtained by a sulfide oxidation reaction. Albendazole as well as its metabolite, albendazole sulfoxide, are used as anthelmintic drugs. The oxidation reagent is H[subscript 2]O[subscript 2] in acetic acid. The reaction is environmental friendly,…

Children learn about properties of materials as they walk through a fabric store, help in the kitchen, or dig in the garden. Directed explorations in the classroom build on these early experiences. In the inquiry-based activity described here, students prepare to learn about wet and dry ingredients (liquids and solids) and how they mix together by…

For several years, the author's fifth-grade students raised and observed plants, kept journals, and analyzed the functions of the parts of a plant. But this year, a near disaster taught her a lesson and increased the value of the activity for her students. Not only did students learn about plants, they now understand what a variable is and how…

We describe a study of programs to deepen families' scientific inquiry practices in a science museum setting. The programs incorporated research-based learning principles from formal and informal educational environments. In a randomized experimental design, two versions of the programs, called "inquiry games," were compared to two control…

Crystals are beautiful structures--yet they occur naturally in dirty and remote places. In the inquiry-based activity described here, students will enjoy the process of creating their own crystals and using microscopes to examine them. It demonstrates the process of mineral concentration and deposition. Upon completing this activity, students…

In the exciting, "out of this world" activity described here, students measure the Earth using meter sticks while measuring their shadows in two distant locations. To obtain the size of the Earth, students discover the connection between the measurements of the shadows and a model of the spherical Earth following the method developed by…

Bacteriocins, bacteriocidal proteins produced by bacteria, have a very restricted killing range. In this exercise each student isolates an environmental "Enterococcus spp." culture using selective media and then evaluates it for bacteriocin activity against "Enterococcus" strains isolated by classmates.

The continuous growth of computer and sensor technology allows many researchers to develop simple modifications and/or refinements to standard educational experiments, making them more attractive and comprehensible to students and thus increasing their educational impact. In the framework of this approach, the present study proposes an alternative…

The limitations of Fourier transform (FT) Raman spectroscopy, which is used to detect and analyze the scattered radiation, are discussed. FT-Raman has served to revitalize a field that was lagging and the presence of Raman instrumentation as a routine analytical tool is established for the foreseeable future.

Biology teachers know how important it is for them and for their students to engage first-hand with nature. Ideally, bringing students to fields, woodlands, and wetlands to observe, explore, and wonder is the best way to stimulate curiosity and practice scientific inquiry. However, for many reasons, field excursions are not always practical or…

Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) is an instructional model that enables science teachers to transform a traditional laboratory activity into a short integrated instructional unit. To illustrate how the ADI instructional model works, this article describes an ADI lesson developed for a 10th-grade chemistry class. This example lesson was designed to…

A low-cost celestial globe is developed to support astronomical coordinate learning. It is used for demonstrating how stars are positioned and to analyse the motion of celestial bodies or diurnal motion. The model was implemented at a weekend astronomy camp provided for students from schools in the northeastern region of Thailand. A series of…

Imagine recreating a tsunami's force in a bathtub or exploring the potential of geothermal energy by using steam from a kettle to illuminate a light bulb. These types of activities and more are offered in Matthew Levy and Mario Salvadori's collection of experiments and demonstrations in Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tsunamis. More than 30 easy and…

Many recipes for elementary science activities suggest making carbon dioxide from baking soda and vinegar; however, they often do not give exact measurements of the ingredients. The author was able to turn this "drawback" into a plus by challenging her fifth-grade students to find the "ultimate fizz"--i.,e., "What amount of baking soda added to a…