• A Lesson to Dye For [Middle School, integrated]
  Plant dyes are a focus for integrating student invesitgations, history and art. Students use trial-and-error and controlled experiment to explore different plant sources, fibers, colors, mordants, and large scale dyeing. Dyed products can lead to various handcraft projects, such as basic stitchery. Lessons also include the historical, geographical and economic roles of dyes. Role-play of an important woman of Colonial times who introduced indigo to the U.S.
• women in the Scientific Revolution -- Hildegard von Bingen/middle school astronomy and Maria Merian/insects
  
• scientific societies (Frederico Cesi and the Accademia Lincei)
  

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Primary

• Chemical and Human Resources, Part I
  Third grade students study mystery powders to understand physical and chemical properties and their changes, while learning about the chemists who first made those discoveries historically.
• Chemical and Human Resources, Part II
  In the fourth, fifth and sixth grade, students research these historical chemists in more depth, enacting them in vignettes, and teaching their findings to the third graders.

• Of Rice and Men -- Christiaan Eijkman earned a Nobel Prize (despite his erroes!) for finding the cause of beriberi in the Dutch East Indies in the 1890s -- an episode linked to the discovery of vitamins.
• Native American herbalism
  
• maize and indigenous agriculture
  
• classification, imaging, scientific societies (Frederico Cesi and the Accademia Lincei, early 1600s)
  
• early microscopes (1600s)
  
• (re)discovering circulation (William Harvey, early 1600s)
• the nervous system and the seat of feelings: Thomas Willis and the brain in the 1600s
• Maria Merian and insects (women in the Scientific Revolution)
  
• smallpox variolation from Turkey in the 1700s
  
• Darwin's work on orchids and design
  
• interpreting the Archaeopteryx fossil
  
• Robert Koch & tuberculosis
• the behavioral psychology of B.F. Skinner
  
• Debating Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: The President's Advisory Committee on Pesticides, 1963 -- Situate students in 1963 to experience the emergence of modern environmental movement. 12-20 roles.
• the history of wolves in Minnesota
  
• Points East and West -- Western studies of the centuries-old Chinese practice of acupuncture offer an opportunity to discuss both controlled experiments and the cultural contexts of scientific method.

• Sucking Students Into an Understanding of Air Pressure and Vacuums [*middle school] -- borrowing from problems and investigations in the 17th century.
• acids and alkalis in historical perpsective
  
• the chemistry of indigo dye in ancient cultures
  
• distillation and perfumes in 17th-century French courts
  
• chemistry of Egyptian cosmetics
  
• revisiting phlogiston as a key to understanding metals and oxidation and reduction reactions
• on the debate that led to the law of definite proportions
  
• atomic weights and Avogadro's hypothesis
• Splendor of the Spectrum: Bunsen, Kirchoff and the origin of spectroscopy
• Faraday's Candle Observations -- linking a favorite exercise about the nature of observation to the originator, Michael Faraday
• The Mendeleev Puzzle: Not So Simple as it Seems -- challenge students to detect patterns even when everything is not perfectly organized
• Polymers and Serendipity -- introduces organic chemistry through common molecules and the stories of their often "accidental" discoveries

• see also Astronomy
• Retrial of Galileo
• Committee on Uranium -- 1939 decision on research for an atomic bomb
• Time and Space Across Time and Space [middle school] how time and space have been viewed at different times in history and in different cultures--including Nigeria
• light and color (Newton, late 1600s)
  
• light as a particle or a wave: From Newton & Huygens (late 1600s) to Young's double slit expt (1803).
  

• Hildegard von Bingen/middle school astronomy (women in the Scientific Revolution)
• Retrial of Galileo
• interpreting the Archaeopteryx fossil

last updated: 1/12/09