National Science Education Standards.

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: The purpose of this promising practice lesson is to develop the idea that carbon dating is based on gathering evidence in the present and extrapolating it to the past. Students are asked to consider the case of when Frosty the Snowman met his demise (began to melt)....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: The objective of this promising practice lesson is to learn about some of the elementary particles in the Standard Model by building a proton and neutron from quarks. The building blocks of matter that have been experimentally verified are the quarks and leptons described by the Standard Model....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Students learn about the four fundamental forces of nature and the interactions they govern in this promising practice lesson. Matter particles are only one part of the recipe for everything students see around them....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: The purpose of this lesson is to demonstrate that isotopes of an element have different masses; that isotopes are atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons; and that atomic mass is the weighted average of the naturally occurring isotopes of an element. This best practice lesson helps students build their understanding of...

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This promising practice lesson asks students to contemplate how physicists might gather and analyze data related to string theory. One of the major criticisms of string theory is that it cannot presently be experimentally verified....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This promising practice lesson gives students hands-on experience with organizing; identifying trends and understanding correlations, in reference to a grocery store. Students then relate the arrangement of items in their "mega mining mart" to the arrangement of elements in the periodic table....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This lesson introduces electricity to students through historical discoveries and microscopic models. Students connect historical observations of macroscopic phenomena with their microscopic explanations....

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Students use the Internet to research the history of the splitting of the atom and prepare a presentation. The focus of the "splitting-the-atom" story should be on the discovery of nuclear fission and its impact on world affairs....

Projects: Standards First

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: Atoms are the basis of chemistry and the basis for everything in the universe. Matter is composed of atoms....

Projects: Standards First

Discipline: Science

Professional Commentary: This resource provides information on atomic structure and offers a brief history of atomic discovery. The two interactive features, Atom Builder and Diamond Viewer, make the site very appealing to students....

Projects: Standards First