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A warming world will impact bacteria, fungi and other microbes that play key roles in ecosystems. So researchers are working to understand how climate change will affect microbes — and if humans can harness them to reduce its impacts.

Check out these lesson plans paired to articles from the May issue of Science News to learn about new underwear technology and have students analyze the relationship between pressure and temperature in superconducting materials.

Students will investigate how researchers apply the principles of energy, pressure, temperature and resistance to superconductor research. Students will analyze data to determine the relationship between pressure and temperature in superconducting materials. They will also consider how researchers use this relationship to create new methods for developing superconductors.

Scientists develop and deploy new tech to answer this question: How many farts per day is “normal?” Learn how the researchers’ experimental design evolved, sometimes in unconventional ways, and discuss how this new tech might help people in the future.

Human-caused climate change is boosting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Using computer simulations, researchers calculated what wind speeds of recent hurricanes would have been without warming and then compared them with the hurricanes’ actual wind speeds. The team found that climate change boosted wind speeds by up to 47 kilometers per hour (28 miles per hour).

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.

In these lesson plans paired to the May issue of Science News Explores, students will learn how researchers used the scientific method to study a beloved landmark and will consider the science behind future pieces of technology and how they could be used to solve a problem or design an experiment.

The relationship between speed and size has long stumped scientists. A study that surveyed how speed tracks with body size found that the make-or-break factor was the time it takes animals to achieve their theoretical top speed.

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.

Learn how researchers use the scientific method to study a beloved landmark — Chicago’s “Rat Hole.” Practice designing your own experiment and creating a hypothesis. Learn to draw conclusions from data, all while using your investigative spirit to study the nuances of this mysterious impression, then make your own observations.

Tiny floating plankton can accidentally eat sediment particles kicked up by deep sea mining. Plankton that munch these nutrient-poor particles could starve, which could lead to a starvation cascade affecting creatures at higher levels of ocean food webs.

Directions for teachers:Since UFOs entered the spotlight in United States in the late 1940s, they’ve come to be dismissed as a hoax or irrational obsession and thus unworthy of study by scientists. But government agencies and officials are trying to change that attitude so that more pilots or citizens will report unusual phenomena that may […]