Design a Paper Car: Exploring the Scientific Method
An engineering design project modified to teach the scientific methos, promote team-builing, and engage students at the beginning of a physics course.

Interpreting Fossil Assemblages
This assignment is a synthesis of many of the skills learned throughout the course from taxonomic identification to paleoecological interpretations.

Calculating the radius of the Earth
Science students often have difficulty thinking about large spatial scales. The purpose of the exercise is to redo Eratosthenes' calculation of the radius of the Earth using data from to sites in ancient Egypt. The excercise teaches about the methodology of science - how Eratothenes figured it out - rather than worried about what the "right" answer is. It can also be used to discuss the role of models in geological thinking.

Interpreting the Geologic History of Canyon de Chelly
The is a two part lesson designed to given in-service teacher an experience in field geology. The lesson is designed by Canyon de Chelly, AZ but can be used anywhere there are outcrops of two or more rock types.

Riparian Plant Lab
In this field exercise for an introductory environmental science course, students investigate plant cover and type in a riparian area using transects. The final assignment is a lab report that includes a summary data table, a graph of cover types along their transect and an analysis of riparian health.

Research Experiences in a Mineralogy Class
Dave Mogk, Montana State University Summary One of the goals of my Mineralogy class is to demonstrate how the principles and content covered in class can be applied to questions of geologic interest or that have ...

Relative Age-dating -- Discovery of Important Stratigraphic Principles
Students don't have to be passively taught the important principles geologists use to do relative age-dating of rocks and geologic events. By careful analysis and critical thinking about photos and ...

Teaching Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics
This activity uses DNA sequences, protein sequence, and chromosome-density maps to re-trace the ancestry of humans and some of their closest relatives.

Lab Activity: Earth's Energy Budget and the Greenhouse Effect
"Earth's Energy Budget and the Greenhouse Effect" is a lab activity in which students use computers and scientific applications software to access, display, describe, analyze, and interpret global, climate-related data sets related to the earth's energy budget and the greenhouse effect.

An Interactive Study: Laws of Conservation of Mass and Definite Proportions
This activity seeks to have students model the process of science by recording quantitative and qualitative attributes of reactants and products in three separate experiments with the purpose of examining the relationship between the original reactant(s) to the final product(s). Students record the mass and volume of reactants and products and independently calculate mathematical relationships between the reactant(s) and product(s). They also record their observations of any physical changes that occur.