Introduction to Sociology is intended for a one-semester introductory sociology course. Conceived of and developed by active sociology instructors, this up-to-date title and can be downloaded now by clicking on the "Get this book" button below. This online, fully editable and customizable title includes sociology theory and research; real-world applications; simplify and debate features; and learning objectives for each chapter

Note: this resource now links to the third edition, released in 2021. Its record is in OER Commons to allow users to see endorsements, reviews, etc...

Interactive Lecture Demonstrations to illustrate the nature of torques and on the balancing of torques in static equilibrium.

This activity is designed to provide qualitative understanding of the Work-Energy Theorem. Students are expected to have read introductory material regarding the theorem, and are tested on this with a short online quiz prior to class. After a brief discussion a "warm-up" demonstration is conducted with student participation. A question is then posed regarding the height a "Hopper Popper" will reach if launched from a thumb instead of a hard flat surface. After initial responses are presented, discussion groups are formed to achieve consensus and provide justification of conclusions. This is followed by a confirming demonstration with surprising results.

This activity is a project in which students research keystone species and report on specific species to the class.

This video is an introduction to power analyses to improve the reproducibility of your research.

Command line interface (OS shell) and graphic user interface (GUI) are different ways of interacting with a computer’s operating system. The shell is a program that presents a command line interface which allows you to control your computer using commands entered with a keyboard instead of controlling graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with a mouse/keyboard combination. There are quite a few reasons to start learning about the shell: The shell gives you power. The command line gives you the power to do your work more efficiently and more quickly. When you need to do things tens to hundreds of times, knowing how to use the shell is transformative. To use remote computers or cloud computing, you need to use the shell.

Data Carpentry lesson to learn to navigate your file system, create, copy, move, and remove files and directories, and automate repetitive tasks using scripts and wildcards with genomics data. Command line interface (OS shell) and graphic user interface (GUI) are different ways of interacting with a computer’s operating system. The shell is a program that presents a command line interface which allows you to control your computer using commands entered with a keyboard instead of controlling graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with a mouse/keyboard combination. There are quite a few reasons to start learning about the shell: For most bioinformatics tools, you have to use the shell. There is no graphical interface. If you want to work in metagenomics or genomics you’re going to need to use the shell. The shell gives you power. The command line gives you the power to do your work more efficiently and more quickly. When you need to do things tens to hundreds of times, knowing how to use the shell is transformative. To use remote computers or cloud computing, you need to use the shell.

In this activity, students are introduced to the methods of inquiry in the Earth sciences and how they differ from what is classically taught in school science.

Web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites. Some data that is available on the web is presented in a format that makes it easier to collect and use it, for example in the form of downloadable comma-separated values (CSV) datasets that can then be imported in a spreadsheet or loaded into a data analysis script. Often however, even though it is publicly available, data is not readily available for reuse. For example it can be contained in a PDF, or a table on a website, or spread across multiple web pages. There are a variety of ways to scrape a website to extract information for reuse. In its simplest form, this can be achieved by copying and pasting snippets from a web page, but this can be unpractical if there is a large amount of data to be extracted, or if it spread over a large number of pages. Instead, specialized tools and techniques can be used to automate this process, by defining what sites to visit, what information to look for, and whether data extraction should stop once the end of a page has been reached, or whether to follow hyperlinks and repeat the process recursively. Automating web scraping also allows to define whether the process should be run at regular intervals and capture changes in the data.

This is an introductory lab for Environmental Science, investigating the bulk density of soil and water holding capacity.

This video will introduce how to calculate confidence intervals around effect sizes using the MBESS package in R. All materials shown in the video, as well as content from our other videos, can be found here: https://osf.io/7gqsi/

Welcome to R! Working with a programming language (especially if it’s your first time) often feels intimidating, but the rewards outweigh any frustrations. An important secret of coding is that even experienced programmers find it difficult and frustrating at times – so if even the best feel that way, why let intimidation stop you? Given time and practice* you will soon find it easier and easier to accomplish what you want. Why learn to code? Bioinformatics – like biology – is messy. Different organisms, different systems, different conditions, all behave differently. Experiments at the bench require a variety of approaches – from tested protocols to trial-and-error. Bioinformatics is also an experimental science, otherwise we could use the same software and same parameters for every genome assembly. Learning to code opens up the full possibilities of computing, especially given that most bioinformatics tools exist only at the command line. Think of it this way: if you could only do molecular biology using a kit, you could probably accomplish a fair amount. However, if you don’t understand the biochemistry of the kit, how would you troubleshoot? How would you do experiments for which there are no kits? R is one of the most widely-used and powerful programming languages in bioinformatics. R especially shines where a variety of statistical tools are required (e.g. RNA-Seq, population genomics, etc.) and in the generation of publication-quality graphs and figures. Rather than get into an R vs. Python debate (both are useful), keep in mind that many of the concepts you will learn apply to Python and other programming languages. Finally, we won’t lie; R is not the easiest-to-learn programming language ever created. So, don’t get discouraged! The truth is that even with the modest amount of R we will cover today, you can start using some sophisticated R software packages, and have a general sense of how to interpret an R script. Get through these lessons, and you are on your way to being an accomplished R user! * We very intentionally used the word practice. One of the other “secrets” of programming is that you can only learn so much by reading about it. Do the exercises in class, re-do them on your own, and then work on your own problems.

This activity is a classroom lab activity that demonstrates chemical change in a dramatic way using a few inexpensive, easily obtainable materials.

This activity is an extension to standard labs that have students generate a pH curve from strong acid/strong base data. Students are asked to predict and test how the the titration end point will shift when titrating vinegar (a weak acid) with NaOH (a strong base).

Students investigate air resistance using many objects. No formal lab procedure, just a few simple instructions leaves a guided-inquiry lab activity.

This activity is a reinforcement lab activity where students experiment with ways to get water to flow out of a cup and up a straw causing an imbalance in the atmospheric pressure surrounding the water.

This activity is an inquiry where students will design an electrolytic cell that produces work in the form of lighting a bulb.

This learning experience is where students launch a bottle rocket and compare how long the bottle was in the air to how much water is placed in the rocket.

This lab activity allows students to apply their knowledge of Archimedes' Principle by calculating the maximum buoyant force that a ship can produce.

This activity is a lab where students design an experiment to construct a self-powered mini-submarine that stays underwater for at least 10 seconds, and then float back up to the top of the water level. Buoyancy and density are applied and discussed.