Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
Becoming from Aeon Video on Vimeo.
Watch a single cell become a complete organism in six pulsing minutes of timelapse. A film by Jan van IJken (www.janvanijken.com).
More on this video: aeon.co/videos/watch-a-single-cell-become-a-complete-organism-in-six-pulsing-minutes-of-timelapse
Watch more on Aeon: aeon.co/video
Subscribe: vimeo.com/aeonvideo
An exceptional timelapse of the developing of an Alpine newt by Jan van IJken
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park resulted in enormous changes to the ecology: more plants and animals as the wolves reduced the deer population and changed the deers’ behavior. The change in vegetation resulted in stabilization of the rivers, so the wolves changed the geomorphology of the park as well.
These three excellent, short videos on John Snow’s life and work on cholera do a nice job of describing what makes for good science–careful observation; good notes; creative analysis of data, etc. They should make a good “spark your imagination” introduction to biological science.
They also have an excellent explanation of all the ‘lies’ and liberties they took in the making of the video.
How to create ultra-cold temperatures (and what it tells us about the universe).
And this article (Below Absolute Zero: Negative Temperatures Explained) tells how to get below absolute zero.
For the student who asked how do we know about black holes if we can’t see them. From NASA. Based on the paper: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/destroyed-star-rains-onto-black-hole-winds-blow-it-back.html
Everyone knows about Charles Darwin, but hardly anyone remembers Alfred Russel Wallace, who came up with the idea of natural selection at the same time as Darwin. Darwin’s publication of the On the Origin of Species was spurred on by Wallace. Flora Lichtman and Sharon Shattuck shed a little light on Wallace with this video:
Indeed, from the introduction of On the Origin of Species:
I have more especially been induced to [publish], as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of the Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work—the latter having read my sketch of 1844—honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr. Wallace’s excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts.
— Darwin, 1859. On the Origin of Species.
Ms. Hahn shared this with me because, “This video — in all of its girl awesomeness — reminded me of your recent Rube Goldberg blog entry and my visit to your classroom to see your middle school students’ “machines.” Entertaining.”
Please don’t take this as an endorsement of energy drinks, especially not for adolescents; they don’t need the extra sugar, caffeine, and who-knows-what. However, it does take a little knowledge of how generators and motors work to get the joke in this ad. I think I’ll ask my middle schoolers to explain what’s going on as a short quiz after we talk about electricity and magnetism.