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Book Chapter |
Unquestionably, conducting successful field studies with high school or beginning college students is complicated, energy consuming, and challenging. Nonetheless, putting students in the field to collect real data,…
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Book Chapter |
Mapping the structure of the vegetation in study plots is important for several reasons. First, with all the detailed data collected, students easily can lose perspective of the bigger picture; they can get lost in the…
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The Abiotic and Biotic Forest Environment
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The exercises in this chapter have a twofold purpose. First, they will characterize the abiotic environment (i.e., the microclimate created by the forest). It is important to realize that forests not only grow in…
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Measuring Commercial Timber Values
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This chapter outlines certain procedures used by foresters to measure the amount or volume of timber (primarily sawlogs) in a forest stand. This process is called timber inventory. Just as a storeowner keeps track of…
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In fiscal year 2007, there were more than 178.6 million visits to national forests across the United States; 86% of them were for recreational purposes! Forests of all kinds provide humans with a wide range of wildland…
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Book Chapter |
Students are out of the field and back into the classroom. In this chapter, students are provided with a Forestry Data Summary Sheet to help them focus on all the computations, sketches, charts, and data they need to…
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Is It Possible to Turn Coal Into Diamonds?
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How cool would it be to be Lois Lane? Anytime she wants a diamond, she just has Superman use his super strength to squeeze a lump of coal. But is this really possible? Using a high enough temperature and enough pressure…
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Analogies: Powerful Teaching-Learning Tools
Book Chapter |
In this activity, teachers explore how teaching shares some attributes with a variety of other occupations, students consider their respective roles as learners, and both consider the reciprocal, interactive nature of…
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Talking Tapes: Beyond Hearing to Understanding
Book Chapter |
The need to combine fun, hands-on “play” with the mentally engaging, minds-on “work” of learning should be emphasized in professional development settings and in science methods courses. Teachers should emphasize…
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Super-Absorbent Polymers: Minds-On Learning and Brain "Growth"
Book Chapter |
Super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) absorb and retain water up to several hundred times their mass and increase in volume up to 600%. Unlike this prop, students’ brains do not grow/learn by passive absorption of received…
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Mental Puzzles, Memory, and Mnemonics: Seeking Patterns
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Various mental puzzles and memory tasks can seem difficult until a heuristic or generalizable problem-solving technique is discovered or invented. A mnemonic (memory device) can help learners remember information. A…
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Sound Tube Toys: The Importance of Varying Stimuli
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Sound is a form of energy created and transmitted as a vibration or mechanical wave that can vary in pitch (frequency) and volume (amplitude). Simple toys can be used to engage interest and to develop and assess the…
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Convection: Conceptual Change Teaching
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Two bottles of different-colored water are placed vertically, one on top of the other with open ends together. They remain stable if the bottle with the hotter (red-colored) water is placed on top of the bottle with the…
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Brain-Powered Lightbulb: Knowledge Transmission?
Book Chapter |
This activity explores the closed, battery-powered circuits that convert chemical potential energy to electrical energy to light energy. Since Edison’s invention of the lightbulb, it has been commonly used as a visual…
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Air Mass Matters: Creating a Need-to-Know
Book Chapter |
Air has weight and exerts a pressure of 10 N/cm2 (or 14.7 lbs/in2) at sea level. Gases are not “no thing.” Gases have mass, occupy space, exert pressure, and are composed of molecules separated by truly “empty” space.…
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