| Looking for ideas for the new school year? Why not begin with Science NetLinks? We currently offer over 550 lessons and activities designed to support standards-based science teaching and learning.
We hope that our lessons, student materials, and interactives help make science teaching and learning interesting and exciting. Be sure to check back often as we continue to develop new science education resources for both you and your students.
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 Cooler in the Shadows
In this lesson, students explore how the amount of sunlight and heat change in areas that are shaded. They will make inferences about the cause of shadows by observing and making their own shadows in the sun. Many properties of shadows (such as heat and brightness of light) will also be identified firsthand as students conduct a number of simple experiments to observe changes that are comparable to those experienced by the MESSENGER spacecraft in its voyage to and around Mercury.
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Robot Farmers
In the recent Will Smith movie "I, Robot," fleets of intelligent robots have taken over a wide range of responsibilities in human society. While a world like that is far off, pieces of it are already emerging. For example, scientists are now designing fleets of small, cheap robots that may revolutionize farming. Check out the Science Update, Robot Farmers, to learn more. |
Power Up!
This lesson will encourage students to examine the trade-offs involved in our use of energy, a topic they will likely revisit throughout their lives.
This lesson is built around an interactive called Power Up! in which students choose how to power a city. They will have to choose between various energy sources, taking into account the trade-offs between cost and the environmental impact of each choice. Discussions before and after the game will examine the various options and what students may want to take into account when making their decisions. |
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 Make a Mission
In this interactive, users build a spacecraft in order to explore the planet Mercury—just as the NASA team did when they planned and built the real MESSENGER spacecraft! To begin, users click on the start icon, which takes them to the first screen where they choose both the difficulty level and one of three launch vehicles (Space Shuttle, Atlas 5, and Delta IV) in order to play the activity.
 Power Play
In this lesson, students will be given the opportunity to trace where energy comes from (and goes next) in examples that involve several different forms of energy: heat, light, motion of objects, chemical, and so on. This lesson also seeks to address the likely confusion in students' minds between energy and energy sources. |
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 Science for Kids
This weeks Science for Kids looks at how glass is crutial to the study of science.
Precious Glass? Why Life Wouldn’t Be the Same Without It
Glass may not cost as much as gold, but considering how it has changed human history, it’s as precious as any fancy metal. Without glass there would have been no cameras, no thermometers, and no eyeglasses -- to name just a few things that are good to have around.
Alan Macfarlane of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, U.K., is a man who really appreciates glass. He and his colleague, Gerry Martin, wrote an essay appearing in the 03 September 2004 issue of the journal Science about how much glass has changed our lives over time. Find out more in this week's Science for Kids.
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 Attention
K-12 Teachers!
K-12 Teachers! We appreciate the importance of the Internet in today's K-12 classroom. Therefore, AAAS and Subaru have partnered to provide an opportunity for teachers to enter the 3rd annual Lesson Writing Competition.
Teachers, you have the chance to WIN by sharing your favorite lessons!
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The 2005 Toyota TAPESTRY
Organization: NSTA
Website: http://www.nsta.org/programs/tapestry/
Deadline: January 19, 2005
The 2005 Toyota TAPESTRY program will award 50 grants and a minimum of 20 "mini-grants" to K-12 science teachers with proposals for innovative science projects that can be implemented in their school or school district over a one-year period. Proposals should demonstrate creativity and vision, and model a novel way of presenting science. All K-12 teachers of science residing in the United States or U.S. territories or possessions are eligible to apply, as are elementary teachers who teach science in a self-contained classroom setting or as teaching specialists.
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