In this activity students will discover that magnetism is the force produced by magnets which does all of the "holding" and that it is also a very important force in nature. This activity introduces the student to simple toy magnets to explore magnetic attraction to items which contain metal by using paper clips. Students will experience that a magnetic force is invisible and explore the magnets attracting ... Full description.

The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to learn about lenses by examining them firsthand and observing their similarities and differences. They will examine various lenses and write a description of what each one looks like, what objects look like when viewed through them, and other information that they decide is necessary to enhance their understanding of how lenses change the way ... Full description.

In this activity students look closely at a variety of lenses and describe how the they are shaped. The terms convex and concave are introduced for describing types of lenses. As students discover new things about how they look at objects, they will write their discoveries in their science notebooks. They are encouraged to look through the lenses at the pages of a book, their hands, and other objects, ... Full description.

Students working in pairs or in small groups will predict how to make a rainbow using the materials they are given, then compare the rainbows that they produce with other groups of students and identify and record the colors that they see. They should also draw diagrams that show how a prism separates the colors of light. Alternative methods to demonstrate the separation of white light into the color ... Full description.

In this activity, students will investigate various aspects of the behavior of light. First, they will use diffraction gratings to view the colors or spectrum produced by visible light, then hold the diffraction grating in front of different light sources and record the colors that they see. They will examine common materials to determine whether they are transparent, translucent, or opaque and use ... Full description.

In this activity students will observe and try to interpret a "closed system," a system which allows the transfer of energy in and out, but not the exchange of material. They will realize that work can be done within the closed system as a result of the transfer of energy into the system even though nothing within the closed system was physically touched. Students will also exercise their understanding ... Full description.

This set of four animated slides illustrates the Coriolis effect, a manifestation of one of Newton's laws which says that objects move in a straight line, in an "inertial" frame of reference, unless acted upon by a force. The slides use the analogy of a ball thrown on a rotating carousel. Full description.

This online course is part of a physics course structured and designed for classroom teaching. The book conforms to the standards and framework prescribed by various Boards of State Education. The content development is targeted to the young minds having questions and doubts. Full description.

This Java application allows users to pump gas molecules into a box and watch what happens as they change volume, add or remove heat, and adjust gravity. Using the temperature and pressure gauges, users can discover how the properties of the gas vary in relation to one another. Full description.

This collection of physics animations lets students see and understand the principles behind the motion of objects under different circumstances, including single and double springs, pendulums, roller coasters, and various combinations of these. Users can vary the parameters of the animations (mass, spring elasticity and length, track shape, gravitational acceleration, and others) and see how the ... Full description.