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Flatulence … in Space
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. – Newton’s Third Law of Motion I introduced my Middle Schoolers to the principles of Newton’s Laws of Motion last week. The discussion started...
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A Model Solar Water Heater
One of the middle-school projects is to build a little solar water heater. By simply pumping water through a black tube that’s sitting in the sun, you can raise the temperature of the water by about...
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Momentum
A ball rolling down a ramp hits a car which moves off uphill. Can you come up with an experiment to predict how far the car will move if the ball is released from any height? What if different masses...
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The Appendix: A Useless bit of Biology? Perhaps Not
The appendix has long been supposed to be a vestigial, useless organ. But a 2007 study suggests that it might have had — and may still have in many developing countries — an important role in...
View ArticleThe Digestive System
In his critique of research on the beneficial-bacteria storing role of the appendix, PZ Myers includes an excellent overview of the digestive system. When you eat something, it first goes into the...
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Hearts
Chicken hearts (left) and a pig heart (right). My middle school class has been looking at organ systems and we’ve started doing a few dissections. We compared chicken and pig hearts last week. Pig...
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Shrimp
Drawing an external diagram of a jumbo shrimp. Our middle-school dissections have moved on from hearts to whole organisms. This week: jumbo shrimp. I particularly like these decapods because the...
View ArticleMitosis and Meiosis Videos
More information on my other mitosis resources posts (including the mitosis dance). Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2013. Mitosis and Meiosis Videos, Retrieved April 12th, 2013, from Montessori Muddle:...
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Beading DNA
A small group of students use the DNA Writer website (on an iPad) to assemble a string of beads to represent a four genes on a piece of DNA. Meiosis is a little hard to explain and follow, even with...
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Pond Microbe Identification
Mic-UK has an excellent reference for microscopic life. It’s where I learned about Gastrotrichs. Mic-UK’s simple guide to small and microscopic pond life. Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2013. Pond...
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Measuring Momentum
I had one of my middle school student groups try a conservation of momentum experiment that, while they made it out very well in the end, did not do a good job of conserving momentum. A marble moves...
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Electricity and Magnetism Experiments
Building bulbs into parallel circuits. Last week, my middle schoolers did a set of experiments on electricity and magnetism. They answered the questions: How does the voltage across each light bulb...
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