Mile High Experimenting
This spring’s ACS meeting was miles above the rest— or at least one mile above most others since it was hosted in Denver, CO. While we were in the Mile High City, we decided to do a mile high experiment— but in our...
Modeling Biological Oxygen Demand
Biological oxygen demand (BOD) relates to the change in oxygen that occurs in bodies of water as a result of microorganisms taking in and using dissolved oxygen as they decompose organic matter. These decomposers utilize...
St. Patrick's Day - Green River Spectrometry
Talk about luck of the Irish! NSTA 2015 in Chicago happened to coincide with the city’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities and the greening of the Chicago River. A group of us ventured to the river, with a PASCO Wireless...
Exploring Physiology with SPARKvue® on the iPhone®
PASCO’s intuitive SPARKvue software is now available for phones, making it even more convenient for your students to explore the world around them.Have you read the “Health Wise” column in NSTA’s January 2015 issue...
Sunlight Intensity and the Albedo Effect
In the environment, light intensity and temperature are related. However, due to the reflective properties of different surfaces on the Earth (called the albedo effect), the degree that light intensity and temperature are...
Forces of Attraction
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and attractive forces are on everyone’s mind. In science, a general rule is “opposites attract.” In solution chemistry, there is another saying, “like dissolves like.”Although...
“Like Dissolves Like,” But How Much?
After introducing the concept of “like dissolves like,” sensors can be used to quantify how much solute is dissolved in a solution.Conductivity is a great tool for quantifying the amount of particular types of solute...
Impulse of a Rocket Engine – Area Under a Force Curve
Thrust curves for model rocket engines are a great way to explore impulse. While every student has everyday experiences with impulses, they are less familiar with the mathematical concept and resulting units of N’s. Analyzing force curves using real data