Evidence overwhelmingly points to mass extinction events being a cyclical part of the history of life on earth. By using data from the fossil record scientists have been able to estimate the rate at which species have gone extinct over the last 550 million years on our planet. It is through this kind of work that we have learned about mass extinction events.
Read MoreCovid-19 has affected nearly all of us in some way. The arrival of widespread vaccine use brought much optimism in the US and worldwide in late 2020 and early 2021. By October of 2021 more than 65% of Americans (76% of all eligible at the time of writing) have received at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot. However, throughout the late summer and fall of 2021, Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths spiked throughout much of the US.
Read MoreWhy is the periodic table called the periodic table? Why isn’t it called the table of elements or the table of chemistry or something else? Sure, there are periods and groups in it, but what makes the entire table periodic, exactly?
Read MoreSurface Anomaly Temperatures from My NASA Data. This dataset was made by taking a subset of a larger NASA dataset. It records monthly temperature anomalies for nearly the entire globe from January 1880 through March of 2021. For the dataset in this activity, we haphazardly selected three locations each as samples for low, middle, and high latitudes. This dataset can be used to examine evidence for climate change and the ice albedo effect.
Read MoreAll falling objects (including a human body wearing a parachute) will accelerate until they reach terminal velocity. At the point where the speed of the falling parachutist is no longer increasing, the acceleration has reached zero and the parachuter is said to have reached terminal velocity.
Read MoreAll falling objects (including a human body wearing a parachute) will accelerate until they reach terminal velocity. At the point where the speed of the falling parachutist is no longer increasing, the acceleration has reached zero and the parachuter is said to have reached terminal velocity.
Read MoreThe pH scale is a log scale. What exactly does that mean?
Read MoreIf you’ve ever been in a chemistry lab, you likely noticed the wide variety of glassware for use in experiments. Not all glassware is equal, however. The specific glassware you’ll use in a particular experiment will depend on the exact measurements and tasks required to complete that experiment. For example, when measuring a volume of solvent to dissolve a solid, the amount of solvent used does not usually need to be exact.
Read MoreA titration is a lab technique used to determine the volume of a solution that is needed to react with a given amount of another substance. In this activity, your goal is to determine the molar concentration and strength of two acid solutions by conducting titrations with a base solution of known concentration.
Read MoreBrood X is coming. This year in the eastern United States from Tennessee to New York billions of cicadas are expected to emerge en masse. These insects have spent the last 17 years underground, tunneling and drinking sap from tree roots roughly eight feet beneath the surface.
Read MoreThe spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has pushed public health issues to the forefront of the national dialogue in the US like never before. As millions of Americans have contracted COVID-19 and hundreds of thousands have succumbed to the virus, the first line of defense to slow the spread of the virus and save lives has been social distancing measures. Unfortunately, such measures have presented very specific challenges to fighting the ongoing opioid epidemic.
Read MoreWhen we represent chemical reactions using balanced equations, the quantities of the reactants will always be fully consumed in order to produce the quantities of the products in the equation.
Read MoreYou are what you eat. Biologically speaking, that old saying is literally true. By studying what fish (and other consumers) are made of, we can determine what they eat and thus their position in the food web.
Read MoreGrandma says, “Thanksgiving dinner gets more expensive every year!” Is she right?
Read MoreEvolutionary pressures impact all living organisms. Even among single-celled bacteria, only the fittest survive.
Read MoreIn this activity, we’ll use lab data to test the hypothesis that lectin promotes mitosis in onion roots.
Read MoreBecause oxygen is one of the byproducts of photosynthesis, we can measure the rate of photosynthesis in leaves by observing the release of oxygen. When we submerge leaf discs cut using a hole-punch in a baking soda solution, we can see the effect of oxygen gas being produced.
Read MoreA classic introductory lab for both conceptual and upper-level physics that will work as an online version of the classic lab activity. Fast. Slow. Forward. Backward. Speeding up. Slowing down. Turning. Stopping. Going. How can we quantify those words and turn them into numbers or even a graph?
Read MoreThe Hardy-Weinberg equation is a relatively simple mathematical equation that describes a very important principle of population genetics: the amount of genetic variation in a population will remain the same from generation to generation unless there are factors driving the frequencies of certain alleles (genetic variants) to change. We know that in reality…
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