JoinAll Resources
Journal Article
Scope on Safety: Trash Talk: How to Compost Safely
This column shares safety information for your classroom. In this month’s issue the author discusses safe composting....
Journal Article
Editor's Roundtable: Art Appreciation
Science Scope’s editor shares thoughts regarding the current issue....
Journal Article
The Green Room: Start an Environmental Club
This column focuses on making your teaching more environmentally friendly. This month’s issue discusses different activities that students can do as part of an environmental club....
Journal Article
Editor's Corner: 21st-Century Skills
The Science Teacher’s editor shares thoughts on the current issue....
Journal Article
Myths, Misconceptions, and Misunderstanding: Polar Misunderstandings: Earth's Dynamic Dynamo
This column identifies and corrects misinformation in the classroom. This month’s issue discusses the movement of Earth's north and south poles....
Journal Article
This article outlines a 30-day nature of science unit designed for first graders, provides journal prompts, and gives examples of students' ideas through their quotes and journal entries. During the lessons, students learn about nature of science ten...
Journal Article
Idea Bank: Getting Up to Speed
The Idea Bank provides tips and techniques for creative teaching, in about 1,000 words. In this month’s Idea Bank, the author discusses the common high school physics activity of calculating walking speed. The author adapted this activity and three...
Journal Article
Art in Motion: A Sailboat Regatta
This activity uses the creative natures of visual art and music to enhance students' potential for creativity while increasing their understanding of the science associated with force and motion. Students design, test, and redesign an sailboat vehicl...
Journal Article
Science in the 21st Century: More Than Just the Facts
The authors have worked to meet the demands of the 21st century by using the Urban EcoLab, an urban ecology curriculum based on the National Science Education Standards. This curriculum emphasizes the local and community-based nature of science and i...
NSTA Press Book
Humans perceive the world by constructing mental models—telling a story, interpreting a map, reading a book. Every way we interact with the world involves mental models, whether creating new ones or building on existing models with the introduction...
By Steven W. Gilbert
eBook
Learning and Teaching Scientific Inquiry: Research and Applications (e-book)
Science teacher educators, curriculum specialists, professional development facilitators, and K–8 teachers are bound to increase their understanding and confidence when teaching inquiry after a careful reading of this definitive volume. Advancing a...
eBook
Models-Based Science Teaching (e-book)
Humans perceive the world by constructing mental models—telling a story, interpreting a map, reading a book. Every way we interact with the world involves mental models, whether creating new ones or building on existing models with the introduction...
Book Chapter
Designing Scientific Tests and Investigations
Designing tests to evaluate scientific models and explanations is one of the hardest—and at the same time one of the most creative—aspects of science. This chapter is devoted to the process of designing tests and investigations to evaluate models...
Book Chapter
Sailors have known for centuries that ocean currents can speed up or slow down a ship. In modern times, scientists have discovered that ocean currents have major effects on climate and weather patterns, and on the ecology of the ocean and nearby land...
Book Chapter
Waves are among the most common phenomena in nature. Waves breaking in the ocean, sound, light, microwaves, radio, or the motion of a guitar cord or a drum are all forms of waves. Such diversity makes finding common properties a challenge but, in ge...
Book Chapter
What are some of the ways you can make waves in water? Have you ever jumped into a pool or lake and done a “cannonball”? This makes waves. The largest water waves on Earth are found in the oceans, and most ocean waves are created by wind. The lar...
Book Chapter
Tanks a Lot—Activities for a Wave Tank (Teacher Demonstration)
Some concepts related to waves, though, are difficult to demonstrate in the classroom. They require observing water waves on a scale that is not ordinarily feasible for the classroom teacher because the necessary equipment is not available. The teach...
Book Chapter
Anyone who has been to the coast realizes there is a rhythm to the ocean. Waves crash onto the beach or rocks. The water they carried washes ashore, then retreats. Another wave crashes ashore. The pattern repeats. However, there is another rhythmic p...
Book Chapter
The Sun, Moon, and Earth are three extremely large objects separated by great distances. Despite the large distances between them, each object affects the others. Earth is kept in orbit around the Sun by the gravitational forces between them. The Moo...
Book Chapter
The Bulge on the Other Side of Earth
The bulge of water on the side of Earth that faces the Moon is easily explained. It is due to the gravitational attraction between the Moon and Earth, including the water on Earth. The difference on the horizontal component of gravity results in wat...
Book Chapter
Telephones, clothing, skis, antihistamines, ballpoint pens, music cassettes, toilet seats, antifreeze, and gasoline: What do these items have in common? All are often made from oil. The United States, like other industrialized nations, bases much of ...
Book Chapter
Hundreds of thousands of boats and ships and the materials and supplies on them have sunk to watery graves since humans first sailed the oceans. Even today, it is common practice for humans to throw their waste into the seas. In the past, much of tha...
Book Chapter
A substance’s molecular structure is responsible for its properties and governs how it interacts with other things on Earth. This Activity introduces and explores one specific property of liquid water. This sample chapter also includes the Table of...
Book Chapter
Water has many peculiar properties: high specific heat capacity, strong ability to act as a solvent, and the ability of the solid phase of water (ice) to float on its liquid phase. Many of the peculiar properties of water are directly related to the ...
Book Chapter
Water is one of the simplest chemical substances on Earth, and yet we must have it to live. In this Activity, you will learn how hydrogen and oxygen join and investigate some characteristics of the bond between them. Knowing the molecular structure o...
Book Chapter
The characteristics of the different parts of the ocean vary depending on the region. While the coastal ocean changes rapidly and presents the largest amount of biological activity, it also shows the largest exchanges with the continents through the ...
Book Chapter
Over and Under— Why Water’s Weird
Understanding water’s molecular structure helps explain some of its characteristics. Density is the mass of an object divided by its volume. In this Activity, you will look at how heating affects the density of different substances....
Book Chapter
The Tides: A Balance of Forces
The interaction between the gravitational forces of Earth, the Moon, and the Sun causes tides. The rhythmic movement of the water associated with the tides causes successive high and low waters in the coastal areas. ...
Book Chapter
Earth’s surface is mostly covered by water. Areas not covered by water—the continents—are surrounded by water. If land and water had the same specific heat, we would expect the land and surrounding water to heat up and cool down at the same rat...
Book Chapter
A wave is a disturbance that transmits energy from one location to another. In the ocean, most waves are created by the action of the wind over the surface. The interaction of the waves with the bottom near the shore causes the waves to break. Larger...
Book Chapter
Water is often called the universal solvent because so many substances will dissolve in it. Why do so many substances dissolve readily in water? In this Activity, you will explore the solubility of various substances in water as compared with other l...
Book Chapter
The ocean plays a fundamental role in many ways: from affecting the global climate and its variability, to phenomena such as El Niño, to the dispersal of pollutants such as oil spills. Understanding the dynamics controlling the ocean is essential to...
Book Chapter
If you have ever gone swimming in an ocean, or better yet, in Great Salt Lake, Utah, you may have noticed that it was easier to float in the ocean or in Great Salt Lake than in a pool or freshwater lake. Why is this? In the first part of this Activit...
Book Chapter
Ocean water is not the same everywhere. In some places, the water is colder or deeper than in other places. Some parts are denser or contain differing amounts of dissolved salts than other parts. All these things affect the way ocean water behaves. ...
Book Chapter
The Myth of Davy Jones’s Locker
For centuries, sailors believed that bodies buried or lost at sea did not sink to the bottom. They believed that a special depth existed between the surface and the bottom of the ocean where a body would remain suspended. Sailors called this region o...
Book Chapter
Estuaries — Where the Rivers Meet the Sea
An estuary is a body of water partially enclosed by land that has a connection to a river or stream, and an opening to the ocean. They are places where freshwater coming from rivers and streams mixes with salty ocean water. In this Activity, you will...