Bio&ChemTeach (6-12)

Many children around the world die due to drinking contaminated water.  This engaging science lesson will allow students learn how to build and use a simple homemade filter system to clean contaminated water. This 5th grade, standards-based lesson is great for California Science Content Standards Earth Sciences.  Students make observations, collect data and form hypothesis.  The end result is a gratifying surprise that they will enjoy while learning basic investigation and experimentation concepts.

In this lesson, students are introduced to how the brain interprets and uses sensory information from the visual system to guide how the body moves and performs various tasks. This lesson makes use of a specialized set of goggles with prism lenses that shift what the wearer sees. Using these prism goggles, students will see first hand how the brain adapts over time to changes in what we perceive. The lesson also makes a connection to the brain and brain function by giving students a chance to see and touch a preserved brain specimen.

Students observe the browning of apples after cut and being exposed to air and brainstorm ideas about why this might be happening.
Students think about ways to slow down or prevent the browning effect and in teams create and conduct a simple experiment to test their ideas.

Dietary minerals are available through ingestion of food and supplements.  In this lesson, students first examine the chemical reaction of two forms of iron, Fe⁰ and F⁺² with various pH conditions of either the stomach or intestine to determine how it gets absorbed and eliminated in the body. Then students isolate iron from the foods we eat (such as cereal) using a magnet to attract elemental iron or Fe⁰.

Students will first learn about the cause of cholera, and propose treatment options to save a hypothetical patient. They will then learn about the osmotic basis of the disease by using a simple dialysis tube/sucrose model for cholera diarrhea. Finally, they will discuss how osmosis can be harnessed to effectively treat the disease and how this treatment has saved millions of lives.

Students use a slinky to model earthquake waves. Learn the speed, direction and behavior of different waves which tell scientists about earthquakes.