We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
In this activity, students will play a game called “Run Like a Rabbit” to model population dynamics and then analyze how predator and prey populations changed over time during the game. Students will then read the Science News article "In a Quebec park, a science game brings predator-prey dynamics to life” and identify how the game described in the article differs from the game they played. After they analyze how predator and prey tactics affect population dynamics, students will identify a new tactic that was not included in the “Run like a Rabbit” game and will create a new rule for the game to reflect this tactic.
Scientists and engineers are hard at work developing new technologies that will impact everyday life. Students will focus on one future piece of technology and consider the science behind it before brainstorming ways to use it to solve a problem or design an experiment.
Students will describe what they can learn from different types of fossils, from bones to microfossils. Then they will learn about an example of fossilized vomit and answer questions about how paleontologists use fossilized “clues” to learn about ancient species’ interactions and ecosystems.
In this activity, students will explore long-running research experiments that outlive their scientists, highlighted in a Science News Explores article, while reviewing essential concepts of the scientific method. They will then think about which scientific phenomena lend themselves to longer-term explorations before brainstorming ideas that could lay the foundation for a class research project.
In this activity, students will share their prior knowledge about golf before reading the Science News article “There’s math behind this maddening golf mishap.” Students will then define key terms identified in the article before playing golf in person or digitally and observing how each property or force influences the ball’s movement. At the end of the activity, students will use their knowledge of physics and their observations to describe the “lip out” phenomenon.
In this lesson, students will compare asexual and sexual reproduction while analyzing the rate that offspring are created. Then, they’ll explore how the elm zigzag sawfly is spreading across North America, the threat this poses, why this case is different from other insect invasions and what concerned citizens can do.
Students will explore the cosmic timeline of the universe’s evolution era by era, from the Big Bang until today. Students will present about one of the eras using a visual aid they created to help communicate what happened during the era and the physics behind it.
Students will investigate how researchers apply chemistry principles to create a potential solution to help diabetes patients. Students will define the problem of why it’s difficult to create skin patches to deliver diabetes drugs and brainstorm possible solutions by thinking about the structure and function of the different layers of the epidermis.
In this activity, students will design an experiment to observe how exercise affects their ability to concentrate in class. Students will then read the Science News Explores article “Short exercise workouts can boost classroom performance” and analyze how their experiment differed from the experiment described in the article.
