The study of biomimicry and sustainable design promises great benefits in design applications, offering cost-effective, resourceful, non-polluting avenues for new enterprise. An important final caveat for students to understand is that once copied, species are not expendable. Biomimicry is intended to help people by identifying natural functions from which to pattern human-driven services. Biomimicry was never intended to replace species. Ecosystems remain in critical need of ongoing protection and biodiversity must be preserved for the overall health of the planet. This activity addresses the negative ramifications of species decline. For example, pollinators such as bees are a vital work force in agriculture. They perform an irreplaceable task in ensuring the harvest of most fruit and vegetable crops. In the face of the unexplained colony collapse disorder, we are only now beginning to understand how invaluable these insects are in keeping food costs down and even making the existence of these foods possible for humans.

Create a candle from bee's wax. Activity from Weekly STEM in a Bag. Colorado Americorp agents in Araphahoe, Denver, Garfield, Larimer, and Weld Counties. Work supported by the Corporation for National and Community Service under Americorps grant number 18AFHCO0010008. Opinions or points of view expressed in this lesson are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of or a position that is endorsed by the Corporation or the Americorps program. This resource is also available in Spanish in the linked file.

This interactive shows the extent of the killing of lodgepole pine trees in western Canada. The spread of pine beetle throughout British Columbia has devastated the lodgepole pine forests there. This animation shows the spread of the beetle and the increasing numbers of trees affected from 1999-2008 and predicts the spread up until 2015.

In this exercise, students will use the Neotoma database and ArcGIS Online to create a distribution map of modern collection localities of beetle taxa associated with an assemblage of fossil beetles from the Conklin Quarry site in eastern Iowa.

a data rich exercise to help students discover how organisms move in response to climate change

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This text introductory chemistry text is aimed for a single semester or quarter beginning experience to the field. The textmaps survey some of the basic topics of chemistry. This survey should give student enough knowledge to appreciate the impact of chemistry in everyday life and, if necessary, prepare student for additional instruction in chemistry.

This textbook was written for a community college introductory course in spreadsheets utilizing Microsoft Excel. While the figures shown utilize Excel 2016, the textbook was written to be applicable to other versions of Excel as well. The book introduces new users to the basics of spreadsheets and is appropriate for students in any major who have not used Excel before.

This activity is a scientific investigation focusing on inquiry after using the Foss Water Kit. The students will pose a question, create a procedure and produce a poster showing their findings.

This is a three-part project spanning five weeks that uniquely interweaves individual and cooperative learning in the context of health care reform and the 2008 United States presidential campaign.

This is an activity that involves students modeling the behavior and competition that Charles Darwin's finches would have gone through as they competed for food and space on the Galapagos Islands. Some will survive. Some won't.

Teach students about P-waves and S-waves by having them model them with their own bodies.

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Experienced Registered Reports editors and reviewers come together to discuss the format and best practices for handling submissions. The panelists also share insights into what editors are looking for from reviewers as well as practical guidelines for writing a Registered Report. ABOUT THE PANELISTS: Chris Chambers | Chris is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Cardiff University, Chair of the Registered Reports Committee supported by the Center for Open Science, and one of the founders of Registered Reports. He has helped establish the Registered Reports format for over a dozen journals. Anastasia Kiyonaga | Anastasia is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses converging behavioral, brain stimulation, and neuroimaging methods to probe memory and attention processes. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher with Mark D'Esposito in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to Berkeley, she received her Ph.D. with Tobias Egner in the Duke Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego starting January, 2020. Jason Scimeca | Jason is a cognitive neuroscientist at UC Berkeley. His research investigates the neural systems that support high-level cognitive processes such as executive function, working memory, and the flexible control of behavior. He completed his Ph.D. at Brown University with David Badre and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Mark D'Esposito's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Moderated by David Mellor, Director of Policy Initiatives for the Center for Open Science.

This collection uses primary sources to explore Toni Morrison's Beloved. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Students will learn that money is an invention. They will read and analyze an essay focusing primarily on one aspect of Ben Franklin's life his work as a printer and how he was an inventor and entrepreneur who also promoted the use of currency in the United States. Students will cite specific textual evidence regarding problems and solutions and will answer questions and complete a timeline. By using evidence and information gleaned from text, students will write a fictitious social media post defending the selection of Ben Franklin's portrait for the $100 note.

Students learn about material properties, and that engineers must consider many different materials properties when designing. This activity focuses on strength-to-weight ratios and how sometimes the strongest material is not always the best material.

Explore bending of light between two media with different indices of refraction. See how changing from air to water to glass changes the bending angle. Play with prisms of different shapes and make rainbows.

This activity will allow students to see light bending. The students will be able to calculate the amount of bend or refraction that occurs with various mediums.

Research reveals that if students are presented with negative information about environmental issues and they are not also provided with a plan for action, they often manifest denial on many levels. This exercise is designed to get students to directly address the emotions they face when learning about environmental issues and to make an action plan to address them in their individual lives.

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Students toss coins to determine what traits a set of mouse parents possess, such as fur color, body size, heat tolerance, and running speed. Then they use coin tossing to determine the traits a mouse pup born to these parents possesses. Then they compare these physical features to features that would be most adaptive in several different environmental conditions. Finally, students consider what would happen to the mouse offspring if those environmental conditions were to change: which mice would be most likely to survive and produce the next generation?

In this video (Part IV) that is approximately 2 minutes long, students will examine the Fiat money system. This covers standard EPF.6 (a).

In this optics activity, learners discover that when they rotate a special black and white pattern called a Benham's Disk, it produces the illusion of colored rings. Learners experiment with the speed of rotation and direction of rotation to observe varying patterns. Use this activity to explain to learners how our eyes detect color and how different color receptors in the eye respond at different rates.