Are you old enough to remember hearing those words spoken by President John F. Kennedy? I’m not, but I have a distinct memory of the night of July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon—the first humans to set foot on a celestial body other than planet Earth.
I was seven […]

How Does an iPod Affect a Polar Bear?

Photo courtesy of Amanda Graham (Yukon White Light) via Flickr.
When we talk about the problems of global climate change, we tend to focus on cars and coal-burning power plants as major contributors. Yet there are other significant players, including consumer electronics. The number of cell phones, MP3 players, […]

It is estimated that 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide comes from the manufacture of cement. Some clever manufacturers are finding ways to not only reduce the carbon footprint of the industry but possibly reverse it! That is to say, it seems possible to capture CO2 and store it in concrete, i.e. sequester […]

Discover the Universe in the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009)
Are you an astronomy enthusiast? Do you have students who excitedly tell you about what they saw most recently through their own telescope? Then you are probably also aware that the Earth and Space Science content standard for grades 5-8 of the National Science Education […]

Wind power is recognized as a clean, quiet, feasible alternative electricity source around the world. When you think of wind power, what image comes to mind? A wide expanse of undeveloped land dotted with sleek, rotating turbines? What about rooftop turbines right in the city, similar in arrangement to solar rooftop panels?
The NYTimes.com published a […]

What is the International Space Station? How long has it been up there? Who goes up there and for how long? What do astronauts do on the space station? These are intriguing, valid questions you can pose to your students, or perhaps your students have already posed them to you. The NASA space exploration program […]

In middle school, students are progressing in their knowledge of what matter is, what it is made of, how it behaves and changes, and how it can be manipulated. These phenomena are the nature of chemistry. So why not use the term “chemistry” with students and celebrate National Chemistry Week? This year the American Chemical […]

Need an answer to your students’ question “Why do I need to take science? I’m not going to be a scientist!” On June 1, 2008, Brian Greene, physicist at Columbia University and author, wrote an op ed in the New York Times with your answer. Early in the two page article, he says
When we look […]

Middle school students are often intrigued by the excitement of exploration and the adventures of explorers, as their enthusiasm for Indiana Jones attests. Space exploration should be no exception. With new images now available from the Mars explorer, Phoenix, teachers can capitalize on student interest in exploration to meet some of the Earth and Space […]

Have you ever considered the irony of a gym full of people using electrically powered exercise machines to burn energy? What if the mechanical energy of those moving bodies could be converted into usable electric energy? That’s exactly what Arthur Kuo, a University of Michigan mechanical engineer, and his colleagues have done. Both News in […]