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Book Chapter
Flowers: More Than Just Pretty
Children love to look at flowers but few are inclined to become familiar with the structure and function of the flower. This story is aimed at providing some motivation for children to learn about one of the most important evolutionary developments i...
Book Chapter
Hardly a day goes by without something arriving by e-mail or being posted on the internet that just doesn’t sound true. The students in this story are depicted as having alert skepticism about things that don’t actually add up in their minds and ...
Book Chapter
Magnetism is a force that acts over a distance. Children play with magnetic toys all of the time. Any family that has a refrigerator knows that the number of magnets on the door defines the size of the appliance. This story should give students an op...
Book Chapter
This story should give students an opportunity to discover that every liquid has its own unique boiling point and that heat applied to any liquid that has reached its boiling point will not result in an increase in temperature but will be used to cha...
Book Chapter
Dissolving things in the universal solvent water is an everyday experience for almost all of us. We don’t have a lot of trouble dissolving honey in hot tea, but when it comes to sweetening cold iced tea, it is almost impossible. Obviously, water is...
Book Chapter
This story poses a challenge to solve the mystery of light, color, and how we see color. It also asks the question, “What is color?” After investigating the phenomena of color and color filters, students should realize that light is made up of ma...
Book Chapter
This story is designed to motivate students to explore how mirrors work and how mirrors reflect the light—first reflected from objects to the mirror and then to our eyes as images—and to discover in this particular case the famed rule that “the...
Book Chapter
Using the Book and the Stories
It is often difficult for overburdened teachers to develop lessons or activities that are compatible with the everyday life experiences of their students. A major premise of this book is that if students can see the real-life implications of science ...
Book Chapter
Using the Book in Different Ways
Although the book was originally designed for use with K–8 students by teachers or adults in informal settings, it became obvious that a book containing stories and content material for teachers who are intent on teaching in an inquiry mode had oth...
Book Chapter
The Link Between Science, Inquiry, and Language Literacy
There is currently a strong effort to combine science and literacy, because a growing body of research stresses the importance of language in learning science. Discussion, argumentation, discourse of all kinds, group consensus, and social interaction...
Book Chapter
What’s Hiding in the Woodpile?
Wood comes from trees, right? It is full of potential chemical energy that can produce heat when it is put into a stove or fireplace and burned. Yet, in this story, the Earth’s bounty seems to produce a cooler room. What can be the cause? Thermodyn...
Book Chapter
This story is based upon using solar energy and a variety of materials to modify and channel this energy to capture and hold heat. Almost everybody has experienced the differences in temperature due to sunshine passing through windows into an enclose...
Book Chapter
In 1991 and 1992, John Leach, Bonnie Shapiro, and the author did a study in which they interviewed approximately 400 students from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States about their beliefs surrounding the decay of an apple over a year’s...
Book Chapter
This story obviously is aimed at the technology standards. Two simple timing devices are mentioned with the suggestion that more are possible. These can be improved to meet the challenge or other devices could be invented. Students are being challeng...
Book Chapter
The two concepts at work here are conservation of matter and the question about many surfaces vs. fewer surfaces absorbing heat. You may wonder what this story is doing in the Earth system science area, but it has to do not only with thermodynamics a...