In this lesson, students learn about major landforms (e.g., mountains, rivers, plains, valleys, canyons and plateaus) and how they occur on the Earth's surface. They learn about the civil and geotechnical engineering applications of geology and landforms, including the design of transportation systems, mining, mapping and measuring natural hazards.

Students will explore the components of soil and make a model of sedimentary rock layers and fossil fuels.

Students will identify and compare attributes of two-dimensional and three- dimensional shapes in the world around them.

Students will identify and compare attributes of two-dimensional and three- dimensional shapes in the world around them.

Students will prepare the vegetable beds for planting exploring how simple and compound machines work.

Students research simple machines and other mechanisms as they learn about and make Rube Goldberg machines. Working in teams, students design and build their own Rube Goldberg devices with 10 separate steps, including at least six simple machines. In addition to the use of readily available classroom craft supplies, 3D printers may be used (if available) to design and print one or more device mechanisms. Students love this open-ended, team-building project with great potential for creativity and humor.

In this activity, students are challenged to design a contraption using simple machines to move a circus elephant into a rail car. After students consider their audience and constraints, they work in groups to brainstorm ideas and select one concept to communicate to the class.

Students examine collisions between two skateboards with different masses to learn about conservation of momentum in collisions.

Towards finding a solution to the unit's Grand Challenge Question about using nanoparticles to detect, treat and protect against skin cancer, students continue the research phase in order to answer the next research questions: What is the structure and function of skin? How does UV radiation affect the chemical reactions that go on within the skin? After seeing an ultraviolet-sensitive bead change color and learning how they work, students learn about skin anatomy and the effects of ultraviolet radiation on human skin, pollution's damaging effect on the ozone layer that can lead to increases in skin cancer, the UV index, types of skin cancer, ABCDEs of mole and lesion evaluation, and the sun protection factor (SPF) rating system for sunscreens. This prepares students to conduct the associated activity, in which they design quality-control experiments to test SPF substances.

Students will measure the dimensions of containers in the garden to determine the volume of soil and work out computations based off the volume.

Students will arrange themselves in planetary order and determine the distance from the sun.

Students will listen for sounds in the garden paying careful attention to volume (how loud or soft a sound), pitch (how high or low) , or if it is a natural or man- made sound.

To understand the challenges of satellite construction, student teams design and create model spacecraft to protect vital components from the harsh conditions found on Mercury and Venus. They use slices of butter in plastic eggs to represent the internal data collection components of the spacecraft. To discover the strengths and weaknesses of their designs, they test their unique thermal protection systems in a planet simulation test box that provides higher temperature and pressure conditions.

Students use the spectrographs from the "Building a Fancy Spectrograph" activity to gather data about light sources. Using their data, they make comparisons between different light sources and make conjectures about the composition of a mystery light source.

Students see how potential energy (stored energy) can be converted into kinetic energy (motion). Acting as if they were engineers designing vehicles, they use rubber bands, pencils and spools to explore how elastic potential energy from twisted rubber bands can roll the spools. They brainstorm, prototype, modify, test and redesign variations to the basic spool racer design in order to meet different design criteria, ultimately facing off in a race competition. These simple-to-make devices store potential energy in twisted rubber bands and then convert the potential energy to kinetic energy upon release.

STUDENT ACTIVITY -- 2nd Grade -- TX/GAThis is a distance-learning lesson students can complete at home.Students will identify which unit of measure-inch, foot or yard-is best for measuring various items in the outdoor space. Then, they will use the appropriate tool to measure a variety of objects to the nearest marker.This activity was created by Out Teach (out-teach.org), a nonprofit providing outdoor experiential learning to transform Science education for students in under-served communities.

Working as if they are engineers aiming to analyze and then improve data collection devices for precision agriculture, students determine how accurate temperature sensors are by comparing them to each other. Teams record soil temperature data during a class period while making changes to the samples to mimic real-world crop conditions—such as the addition of water and heat and the removal of the heat. Groups analyze their collected data by finding the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. Then, the class combines all the team data points in order to compare data collected from numerous devices and analyze the accuracy of their recording devices by finding the standard deviation of temperature readings at each minute. By averaging the standard deviations of each minute’s temperature reading, students determine the accuracy of their temperature sensors. Students present their findings and conclusions, including making recommendations for temperature sensor improvements.

Students will use their knowledge of stem and leaf plots to represent temperature in various locations outdoors.

Students will describe the plot and study traits, motivations and feelings using Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens.

Strategies for Advancing Knowledge Through Copyright Webinar: A free webinar from Greg Cram, Director of Copyright, Permissions and Information Policy at The New York Public Library. Link to slides and recording can be found at https://www.tdl.org/2020/04/nypl-copyright-webinar/