Free science lesson plans designed to engage students through hands-on experiments and activities. Chemistry, life sciences, physics, engineering and more, for elementary, middle and high school teachers.
Junkbots are easy-to-build robots that you can make using a simple circuit and some recyclable materials. In this lesson, your students will learn about engineering design as they compete to build the fastest robot. No previous robotics experience is required!
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-ETS1-4. Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
Your students might know that they can burn calories, but do they know what a calorie really is? In this fun lesson plan, your students will measure the energy content of food by literally burning it using a device called a calorimeter that they will design and build themselves. This will get your students thinking about the chemistry of energy transfer as well as good nutrition, and gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "burning calories!"
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-PS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device that either minimizes or maximizes thermal energy transfer.
MS-PS3-4. Plan an investigation to determine the relationships among the energy transferred, the type of matter, the mass, and the change in the average kinetic energy of the particles as measured by the temperature of the sample.
Students will enter this lesson knowing that materials get warm in the sun. In this fun follow-up activity, your students will get creative with craft materials. They will figure out how to protect an "animal" and its territory from getting too hot in the sun. What will they build to keep their animals cool?
This lesson connects effortlessly with the lesson.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
K-PS3-2.
Use tools and materials to design and build a structure that will reduce the warming effect of sunlight on an area.
Have you or your students ever felt frustrated at not being able to access a favorite website or online game? Did you realize the site might have been a victim of a cyber-attack? If you aren't careful about online security, your own computer could even be used to launch the attack! In this fun lesson plan, you and your students will model one type of attack (a denial-of-service attack) and figure out how to protect the network against it (no computer programming required)!
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-ETS1-3. Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
MS-ETS1-4. Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
Are paper airplanes a nuisance in your classroom? They don't have to be! Those distractions can be a constructive learning opportunity: use them to teach your students about the engineering design process. In this fun lesson, you will be the "customer" ordering a paper airplane, and your student teams will be engineering companies that will manufacture planes. Before they start making planes, they need to define the criteria and constraints of this engineering problem.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
3-5-ETS1-1. Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
If you love doing arts and crafts with your students, this lesson plan is for you! Teach them about energy, electricity, and circuits as they build light-up sculptures, using something they are all familiar with—play dough! Clear step-by-step instructions are provided and no previous experience with circuits is required.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
4-PS3-2. Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.
Does human activity impact the environment? If so, how can we measure our impact on the environment? How can we use these measurements to change our behavior? In this project, your students will explore these questions by designing and building an electronic circuit that can measure environmental parameters like water quality or light pollution.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
What happens when you get food poisoning or the flu? How does our body fight an infection when we get sick? In this lesson, students will build a model of our immune system to find out how our body responds to invading bacteria or viruses that cause diseases and to investigate the role of memory cells.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-LS1-3. Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.
Do your students think making things float in mid-air is a magic trick? Show them how you can do it with science! In this lesson plan they will learn about interactions between magnets and figure out how to make them float.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
3-PS2-3.
Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other.
How is it possible that our eyes can see things that are not really there? In this fun lesson plan, your students will explore how our vision works with the help of two short experiments that involve some fascinating optical illusions. Let your students discuss why they see a hole in their hand, or why they see colors that were never there, and let them construct their own explanations.
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NGSS Performance Expectations:
MS-LS1-8.
Gather and synthesize information that sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.
