Articulated Science Standards

Arizona Science Resources and Programs

ADE Science Update

ADE Science Update PowerPoint Presentation from Lacey Weiser, ADE Science Specialist (requires PowerPoint software)

Resources for Physics Teachers

Science and Safety: It's Elementary

Science and Safety: Making the Connection

Science Professional Development Video On Demand

3... 2... 1... Liftoff! Educator Guide introduces children to the International Space Station (ISS), the most complex international scientific endeavor in history. Activities focus on the purpose and construction of the ISS, the history of rockets, and the role of rockets in space station assembly. Data collection, observation, exploration, prediction, interpretation, problem solving, and language skills are emphasized. (NASA)

Alien Earths examines the formation of stars and planets and the quest for a habitable planet. Create a virtual a community of microorganisms. Build the perfect solar system. See how planets react with one another, and how some planets help keep our solar system stable. Look at images: can recognize life? (Space Science Institute, supported by Multiple Agencies)

Biology: U.S. Geological Survey provides research results, photos, projects, and othe resources for studies in biology, biodiversity, and ecology. Learn about butterflies and moths of North America, bat research, invasive species, environmental contaminants' effects on plants and animals, redwood research, surf scoters, sea otters, reptiles and amphibians of southern California, the desert tortoise, habitat conservation, and genetic diversity across different species groups. (USGS)

Cyberinfrastructure examines the convergence of three realities -- the spread of the Internet, the shrinkage of computers, and the accumulation of databases -- that has led researchers to envision a planet- wide grid of computing, information, networking, and sensor resources. Learn about projects to develop the emerging cyberinfrastructure. Find out how researchers are beginning to depend on it. Discover resources for teaching and learning about information technology.

Earth and Environmental Science: Research Overview Examines questions that scientists are pursuing: What part do we play in earth's changing climate? What can rock layers tell us about earth's history? How can we understand theforces that lead to earthquakes and volcanoes? How can organisms live without sunlight? How do long-term changes affect earth's ecosystems? (NSF)

Educators' Bridge provides lessons and guides for teaching about earth's climate and the role of carbon, weather, the sun, wildfires, the water cycle, clouds, storms, atmospheric science, and other earth science topics. (National Center for Atmospheric Research, supported by National Science Foundation)

Federal Resource for Educational Excellence (FREE) New Resources at FREE - Engineering, mathematics across the curriculum, solar and hydrogen fuel cell cars, cyber-infrastructure, Antarctic research, history of the Americas, papers of presidents and Congress, Mark Twain, and Henri Rousseau are among the topics of 12 new resources at FREE, the website that makes teaching resources from federal agencies easier to find: For the FREE archives go to: http://www.ed.gov/free.

Geology at the U.S. Geological Survey offers resource collections and maps for studying earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters, as well as rocks and minerals, plate tectonics, earth's interior, fossils, coastal wetlands, deserts, the carbon cycle, climate change, and the solar system. Learn about the San Andreas fault system, the life cycle of a mineral deposit, fire ecology research, big floods in the U.S., and more. (USGS)

Grand Challenges for Engineering asks engineers, scientists, and us: What will be the next great ideas in engineering? Read about the challenges of landing on Mars, engineering for the developing world, and illumination in computer graphics. (National Academy of Engineering, National Science Foundation)

Inside the Cell explores the smallest form of life: the cell. Discover what's happening inside your body. See basic structures that let your cells accomplish their tasks. Learn about functions shared by virtually all cells: making fuel and proteins, transporting materials, and disposing of wastes. Find out how cells specialize to get their unique jobs done -- and how cells reproduce, age, and die. (National Institute of General Medical Sciences)

Junior Solar Sprint and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car Competitions focuses on designing and building solar and hydrogen fuel cell cars. Explore components of solar cars. Conduct experiments to improve car performance. Find activities for measuring solar cell output, tips on vehicle construction and transmission design, and formulas for calculating vehicle performance. See a list of regional competitions sites. Find out how to integrate solar vehicle activities into the curriculum.

Marine Advanced Technology Education Center offers over 100 interviews with marine technology professionals. Learn what it's like to be a commercial diver, software engineer, electrician, environmental cleanup and monitoring technician, fish and game warden, fisher, geological data technician, hydrologist, marine biologist, metal fabricator, ship's engineer, and more. (MATE Center, National Science Foundation)

Medicines by Design explains how scientists unravel the many different ways medicines work in the body and how this information guides the hunt for drugs of the future. Learn about the science of pharmacology, how drugs work in the body, and recent research developments. (National Institute of General Medical Sciences)

Medicines in My Home helps middle school students learn about the safe and effective use of over-the-counter medicines. It is designed for use in health education courses.

Microscope Imaging Station shows what blood is, what happens when the immune system goes awry, and what are stem cells are. See videos of cell structure and function, cell development and motility, plankton, plants, and protozoa.  Learn how the sea urchin helps us understand genes, reproduction, and cancer. (Exploratorium, Multiple Agencies)

nanoHUB.org features online simulations, learning modules, and interactive tools for learning about nanotechnology -- the design and production of structures, devices, and systems one atom or one molecule at a time. Analyze the electronic properties of different nano materials and the optical properties of nanoparticles. Explore molecular conduction, nanofluids, and nanowires. Create simulations of nanoelectronic and nanoelectromechanical systems. Registration required. (NSF)

NIST Metric Information and Conversions provides background on the metric system and exercises to help students learn to "think metric." Find information about metric units and sports, metric activities associated with the Wright Brothers' flight experiments, and conversion tables for length, area, temperature, and volume, (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

Physics Education Technology (PhET) Produces fun, interactive simulations of physical phenomena. More than 35 simulations let students experiment with circuits, string tension, kinetic and potential energy, radio waves and electromagnetic fields, balloons and staticelectricity, ideal gas and buoyancy, velocity and acceleration, sound waves and the Doppler effect, and more. (NSF)

Physics to Go A collection of reviewed resources for teaching and learning about astronomy, electricity and magnetism, fluids, light, modern physics, motion and energy, quantum physics, and waves and pendula. (NSF)

Practical Uses of Math and Science features more than 60 examples of how science and math can be used in interesting settings and everyday life. Topics include clouds (why they float), social security benefits (algebra), Pythagorean theorem (cabinet corners), ice sheets and sea level, logarithms, matching birthdays (statistics), natural selection and a scavenger hunt, photons, traffic signals (probability), seasons (causes), volcanic clouds, wind chill (algebra), and more. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Solar System examines the solar system and NASA explorations in it. Learn about how the solar system formed, what we know about Mars, and the likelihood of earth colliding with an asteroid or comet. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

TeachEngineering provides more than 500 lessons and activities for teaching engineering content in K-12 science and math classes. Topics include oil and energy consumption, water and electricity, mass and volume, various energy sources, heat transfer, solar heating systems, collisions and momentum, electrons, cellular respiration, biomedical engineering, and more. Lessons connect real-world experiences with concepts and skills already taught in K-12 classrooms.

Teach the Earth Offers hundreds of teaching activities, visualizations, and resources for teaching earth science. Categories include biosphere, climate change, energy/material cycles, geology and human health, geochemistry, hydrosphere and cryosphere, mineralogy, ocean systems, petrology, solar system, and earth history. Special sections are provided on using data and teaching quantitative skills. (NSF)

Universe explores questions that include: How do galaxies and stars form? What powered the Big Bang? What is dark energy and how is it pulling the universe apart? Is the universe expanding? What happens at the edge of a black hole? Is there life beyond earth? (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

U.S. Antarctic Program aims to understand the world's coldest, windiest, driest, and harshest continent -- its ecosystems and its effects on global processes such as climate. Read breaking news from a newspaper written in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Learn about important discoveries. See articles about a killer crater found under the ice and the melting of polar ice sheets.

NASA Education Resource Center Located at ERAU in Prescott, AZ. This web site has Resources and Professional Development Opportunities for Educators as well as opportunities for students. It is located on the ERAU campus with the following contact information:
Hours of Operation:
7 a.m.-7 p.m. 7 days a week, by appointment. Call or e-mail to schedule an appointment.
Contact: Stacy Deveau
E-mail: stacy.deveau@erau.edu
Phone: 928-777-6281

National Environmental Education Week Over 100 educational institutions have already registered to participate in National Environmental Education Week, April 13- 19, 2008. In conjunction with the start of the school year in September, EE Week will launch a redesigned website featuring standards-based K-12th grade activities and lesson plans, professional development opportunities, and a Promotional Toolkit with printable flyers, sample announcements, and template press releases. The 2008 theme will also be announced, so stay tuned for further details!

If you work with children in a school, nature center, zoo, museum, aquarium, or other educational institution, you can join EE Week's efforts and gain national exposure for your work.

To register for EE Week (it only takes 5 minutes and is free) go to www.EEWeek.org/register.htm. All inquiries about EE Week can be directed to EEWeek@neefusa.org or call 202-261-6484.

FACES Magazine Seeks Earth Day Submissions FACES, an educational magazine for children, is looking for kids ages 9-16 who would like to share what they are doing to protect the Earth and its resources. Their stories will be published in a special Earth Day issue of FACES. All contributors who are published will receive a complimentary copy of the April 2008 issue. Submissions must accompany a photo of the student in either print or high resolution digital format measuring at least 3 x 5 inches. Photos and comments should be sent by mail to: Peg Lopata, FACES, Cobblestone Publishing, 30 Grove St., Peterborough, NH 03458 or by email to: plopatafacesmag@yahoo.com. All photos and comments become the property of Cobblestone Publishing.

Explore The Wonder Of Microscopic Life With This Exploratorium Web Site
A few years back the Exploratorium launched the most ambitious microscope facility ever created for use by the general public, the Microscope Imaging Station. The project gives museum visitors the ability to view living specimens, as well as control the microscopes themselves to change the magnification, focus, and even the lighting. The project’s companion web site reflects the diversity of topics and specimens that users might see on a typical visit; its goal is to recreate some of the excitement and wonder that the earliest biological researchers found as they discovered another world all around them. Through images, text, and video, visitors to the site can learn about blood cells, stem cells, what happens when the immune system goes awry, how the zebrafish is helping biomedical researchers understand how our hearts function, and how the sea urchin helps scientists understand such topics as genes, reproduction, and cancer.

SCIENCE GRANTS

Outdoor Classrooms or Projects
Grant Title: Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education
Organization: Wild Ones
Eligibility: K-12 schools
Value: $100-$500
Deadline: November 15, 2007

Grants are usually awarded to child-centered projects that create native plant landscapes or develop outdoor classrooms.

Aerospace Activities in Curriculum
Grant Title: Air Force Association Grants
Organization: Air Force Association
Eligibility: K-12 educators
Value: $250
Deadline: November 15, 2007

Grants are awarded to encourage development of innovative aerospace activities within the prescribed curriculum. The program also encourages establishing an active relationship between the school and the local Air Force Association organization.

For more information: Call 703-247-5839.

New Resources at FREE
www.ed.gov/free
Mars, the moon, memory, global warming, nanotechnology, the Founding Fathers, Spain's colonization of California, Massachusetts maritime history, and helping Spanish-speaking children learn to read English are among the topics of new resources at FREE, the website that makes teaching resources from federal agencies easier to find. For the FREE archives go to: http://www.ed.gov/free

Sciences

Exploring the Moon is a teacher's guide for learning about lunar geology, distance to the moon, Apollo landing sites, and life support systems.  Lessons focus on calculating the distance between scale models of earth and the moon, designing a spacecraft for travel to and from the moon, the geology of the six Apollo landing sites, and calculating the diameter of the moon using proportions.  (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Global Warming Debate discusses global warming, policy struggles to address it, international efforts, the cap-and-trade system, and more.  Interactive features show how much CO2 different cars produce and how populations around the world may have to adapt to climate changes in 100 years.  (NewsHour, National Science Foundation)

Mars Exploration Rovers tells the story of Spirit and Opportunity, two rovers that are investigating the hills and craters of Mars.  See an animation of Spirit's journey from launch pad to Mars.  Learn about its instruments.  See a slide show of the most detailed images of Mars' surface ever captured.  A lesson on the distance and relative size of other planets is included.  (NewsHour, National Science Foundation)

Memory dissects a sheep brain to show us "the anatomy of memory." See works of an artist who paints entirely from memory.  (Compare his paintings to photos of places.)  Play interactive games that test your memory -- learn ways to improve it.  Discover why some things are easier to remember than others (droodles game).  Which facial features help us remember a face?  Which image of the penny is correct?  Try a mnemonic device called "elaborative encoding."  (Multiple Agencies)

Search for Ancestors looks at the history of the double helix, the science behind DNA test kits for people who want to learn more about their ancestry, an interactive map of human migration over 200,000 years, DNA analysis tracing African-American lineage, and how mutations found in DNA can unlock the past.  (Online NewsHour, National Science Foundation)

Technology reports on how a car company is experimenting with nanotechnology in the quest for environmentally friendly vehicles, how a museum exhibit (created by an artist and a scientist) helps get the word out about the implications of nanotechnology for health care and other fields, and how GPS chips in some cell phones let businesses track delivery drivers and parents keep track of kids.  (Online NewsHour, National Science Foundation)