In a class demonstration, the teacher places different pill types ("chalk" pill, gel pill, and gel tablet) into separate glass beakers of vinegar, representing human stomach acid. After 20-30 minutes, the pills dissolve. Students observe which dissolve the fastest, and discuss the remnants of the various pills. What they learn contributes to their ongoing objective to answer the challenge question presented in lesson 1 of this unit.

To further their understanding of sound energy, students identify the different pitches and frequencies created by a vibrating ruler and a straw kazoo. They create high- and low-pitch sound waves.

The scientific community must be effective in communicating the results of its work to the public in a way that can be understood and used. The need for this is acute, for the complexity and difficulty of environmental and resource problems require full use of all the knowledge scientists can muster. The wisdom of the actions of both the government and private sectors depends in large part on their understanding of resource characteristics.

The U.S. Geological Survey is uniquely qualified to provide much of the required knowledge about natural resources through its many reports and maps and can be proud of the products of its work. Too often, however, reports are couched in words and phrases that are understandable only to other scientists, engineers, or technicians. But, who, really, are the ones to whom the Survey wishes to convey its findings? Other scientists and engineers, yes. But beyond them, by far a larger audience: teachers, students, businessmen, planners, and Federal, State, county, and municipal officials–in short, the public.

More than 50 years ago former Director George Otis Smith recognized the same problem. His plea for “Plain Geology” was a classic, just as applicable now as it was in 1921. It is herewith reprinted to make it generally available.

persuasion example

Description of the processes by which mass, momentum, and energy are transported in plasmas, with special reference to magnetic confinement fusion applications. The Fokker-Planck collision operator and its limiting forms, as well as collisional relaxation and equilibrium, are considered in detail. Special applications include a Lorentz gas, Brownian motion, alpha particles, and runaway electrons. The Braginskii formulation of classical collisional transport in general geometry based on the Fokker-Planck equation is presented. Neoclassical transport in tokamaks, which is sensitive to the details of the magnetic geometry, is considered in the high (Pfirsch-Schluter), low (banana) and intermediate (plateau) regimes of collisionality.

Explore how plates move on the surface of the earth. Change temperature, composition, and thickness of plates. Discover how to create new mountains, volcanoes, or oceans!

In this unit, students learn the very basics of navigation, including the different kinds of navigation and their purposes. The concepts of relative and absolute location, latitude, longitude and cardinal directions are explored, as well as the use and principles of maps and a compass. Students discover the history of navigation and learn the importance of math and how it ties into navigational techniques. Understanding how trilateration can determine one's location leads to a lesson on the global positioning system and how to use a GPS receiver. The unit concludes with an overview of orbits and spacecraft trajectories from Earth to other planets.

In this lesson, students learn about echolocation: what it is and how engineers use it to "see" things in the dark, or deep underwater. Also, they learn how animals use echolocation to catch their dinner and travel the ocean waters and skies without running into things.

To develop an understanding of modern industrial technologies that clean up and prevent air pollution, students build and observe a variety of simple models of engineering pollutant recovery methods: scrubber, electrostatic precipitator, cyclone and baghouse. In an associated literacy activity, students become more aware of global environmental problems and play a part in their solution by writing environmental action campaign letters.

This course presents the mechanical, optical, and transport properties of polymers with respect to the underlying physics and physical chemistry of polymers in melt, solution, and solid state. Topics include conformation and molecular dimensions of polymer chains in solutions, melts, blends, and block copolymers; an examination of the structure of glassy, crystalline, and rubbery elastic states of polymers; thermodynamics of polymer solutions, blends, crystallization; liquid crystallinity, microphase separation, and self-assembled organic-inorganic nanocomposites. Case studies include relationships between structure and function in technologically important polymeric systems.

Students design and build paper rockets around film canisters, which serve as engines. An antacid tablet and water are put into each canister, reacting to form carbon dioxide gas, and acting as the pop rocket's propellant. With the lid snapped on, the continuous creation of gas causes pressure to build up until the lid pops off, sending the rocket into the air. The pop rockets demonstrate Newton's third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Working in teams, students learn the basics of fluid power design using the PFPD as their investigative platform. They investigate the similarities and differences between using pneumatic and hydraulic power in the PFPD. With the main components of the PFPD already assembled, student groups determine the correct way to connect the valves to the actuators using colored, plastic tubing. Once connected, they compete in timed challenges to test their abilities to separate material out of containers using the PFPDs. NOTE: No special pre-requisite knowledge is required for students to be successful in this activity.

Students investigate the accuracy of sundials and the discrepancy that lies between "real time" and "clock time." They track the position of the sun during the course of a relatively short period of time as they make a shadow plot, a horizontal sundial, and a diptych sundial. (The activity may be abridged to include only one or two of the different sundials, instead of all three.)

Students use their knowledge of scales and areas to determine the best locations in Alabraska for the underground caverns. They cut out rectangular paper pieces to represent caverns to scale with the maps and place the cut-outs on the maps to determine feasible locations.

Students learn about the mechanical advantage offered by pulleys in an interactive and game-like manner. By virtue of the activity's mechatronic presentation, they learn to study a mechanical system not as a static image, but rather as a dynamic system that is under their control. Using a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robotics platform and common hardware items, students build a mechanized elevator system. The ability to control different parameters (such as motor power, testing load and pulley arrangement) enables the teacher, as well as the students, to emphasize and reinforce particular aspects/effects of mechanical advantage.

Students use balloons (a polymer) to explore preconditioning a viscoelastic material behavior that is important to understand when designing biomedical devices. They improve their understanding of preconditioning by measuring the force needed to stretch a balloon to the same displacement multiple times. Students gain experience in data collection and graph interpretation.

Forecasting is the ultimate form of model validation. But even if a perfect model is in hand, imperfect forecasts are likely. This course will cover the factors that limit our ability to produce good forecasts, will show how the quality of forecasts can be gauged a priori (predicting our ability to predict!), and will cover the state of the art in operational atmosphere and ocean forecasting systems.

Acting as civil engineers hired by the U.S. Department of Transportation to research how to best use piezoelectric materials to detect road damage, student groups are challenged to independently create their own experiment procedures, working with given materials and tools. The general approach is that they set up model roads using rubber mats to simulate asphalt and piezoelectric transducers to simulate the in-ground road sensors. They drop heavy bolts at various locations on the “road,” collecting data and then analyzing the voltage changes across the piezoelectric transducers caused by the vibrations of the bolt hitting the rubber. After making notches in the rubber “road” to simulate cracks and potholes, they collect more data to see if the piezo elements detect the damage. Students write up their research and conclusions as if presenting evidence to USDOT officials about how the voltage changes across the piezo elements can be used to indicate road damage and extrapolated to determine when roads need maintenance service.

This course provides an introduction to the chemistry of biological, inorganic, and organic molecules.ĺĘTheĺĘemphasis isĺĘon basic principles of atomic and molecular electronic structure, thermodynamics, acid-base and redox equilibria, chemical kinetics, and catalysis. In an effort to illuminate connections between chemistry and biology, a list of the biology-, medicine-, and MIT research-related examples used in 5.111 is provided in Biology-Related Examples. Acknowledgements Development and implementation of the biology-related materials in this course were funded through an HHMI Professors grant to Prof. Catherine L. Drennan.

Principles of Chemistry I & II are LibGuides-based Open Courses with original lecture notes, chapter checklists, and original videos created by Georgia Highlands College faculty. The courses supplement the OpenStax Chemistry open textbook. The courses were created using a Round Nine Textbook Transformation Grant. The courses also contain a supplementary laboratory experiments list and set of video guides.

This course covers the principles of main group (s and p block) element chemistry with an emphasis on synthesis, structure, bonding, and reaction mechanisms.