A neat ASAP video that explains why people lose their hearing over time. Also does a nice job showing the connection between frequency and pitch.

Hank does his best to convince us that chemistry is not torture, but is instead the amazing and beautiful science of stuff. Chemistry can tell us how three tiny particles - the proton, neutron and electron - come together in trillions of combinations to form ... everything. In this inaugural episode of Crash Course Chemistry, we start out with one of the biggest ideas in chemistry ever - stuff is made from atoms. More specifically, we learn about the properties of the nucleus and why they are important to defining what an atom actually is.

Huw James took a trek up Mount Etna and decided to show us what actually happens when a volcano erupts!

With a little bit of help from Dr Suze Kundu and using a simple demonstration heating a glass beaker of wax, stone, sand and water we can see what happens when a volcano erupts.

We can actually tell a lot about a volcano looking at the lava that comes out. If the lava is quite dense and thick we know it contains a lot of the compound silica. If it is less dense it has less silica and spreads out a lot more.

Thick lava will generally erupt from one vent and follow one flow down the side of the volcano. Thinner lava, lava that is less dense, generally erupts from the surrounding magma chambers and flows in many different channels.

Have you ever found yourself in the path of molten lava? Has the volcano you're climbing suddenly erupted and you don't know what to do? Well keep watching because Huw James has all you need to know.

The earth is built on tectonic plates that move around on the mantle. Sometimes these plates move around and come together to form mountain chains like the Himalayas, some rub together and set off earthquakes, and some like Mount Etna, interact and one plate goes underneath the other.

A Dropbox folder being used to store content for the science department at Salem Middle School.

The New York State Science Regents Test.

A page from the DPI website that includes released forms of the MSL tests for science

On this page you will find the essential standards organized by quarters. Each quater has a variety of pdf files and online quizzes. Students that utilize these resources will be well prepared for the quarterly benchmarks and the end of year MSL exam. (Some pdf files are larger than others and may take a while to download. You can save the pdf files to your computer for faster access in the future.)

A collection of science assessment questions from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

To understand how we hear, and how some common problems occur, it helps to understand ear anatomy. ...

'Motile' (or moving) cilia are found in the lungs, respiratory tract and middle ear. These cilia have a rhythmic waving or beating motion (see right). They work, for instance, to keep the airways clear of mucus and dirt, allowing us to breathe easily and without irritation. They also help propel sperm.

A collection of parts of the ear worksheets from the American Audiology Association.

A decent diagram of the parts of the ear that can be used with students. Includes vocabulary and a labeled and unlabeled diagram.

Found this sound quiz online. Might be worth mining for questions at some point.

A Steve Spangler video experiment that might be good for teaching students about the Law of Conservation of Energy. Involves making a solar powered oven to convert light energy to heat energy to cook S'mores.

Recall what you observed in the "disappearing glass" demo. The stirring rod submerged in glycerin appeared to be invisible! In theory, if two materials have exactly the same refractive index, the light passes through without any (or minimal) scattering or refraction. The light travels straight because it cannot detect any difference in the two materials, hence the speed of the travelling light does not change (bend).

This quiz could be used as a building block for another quiz about the speed of light.

A website that provides science teachers with access to a series of diagnostic tests designed to identify the common misconceptions that students hold towards common science concepts. We should use this for pretesting our students.

A good mini-lab that can be used to teach kids about density.

Pour a glass of water and watch it turn to ice instantly! This step-by-step tutorial will show you everything you need to know about Instant Ice.