Will a grape float in oil? Will a metal nut sink in corn syrup? Watch as the ZOOM cast tests the buoyancy of a variety of liquids and objects.

In this video segment adapted from Design Squadí_í_íŹa PBS TV series featuring high school contestants tackling engineering challengesí_í_íŹlearn about the fundamentals of sound as student teams create percussive and stringed instruments for a local band.

In this video segment adapted from Design Squadí_í_íŹa PBS TV series featuring high school contestants tackling engineering challengesí_í_íŹstudents employ the concepts of tension and compression to build a suspension bridge without the aid of power tools.

In this video segment adapted from Design Squadí_í_íŹa PBS TV series featuring high school contestants tackling engineering challengesí_í_íŹstudents employ the concepts of tension and compression as they build a truss bridge without the aid of power tools.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members design and build door alarms using a variety of materials, including aluminum foil, batteries, and buzzers.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members discover that metal is a good conductor of electricity as they play the steadiness tester game.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members make a bridge from a single piece of paper. Will it be strong enough to hold a hundred pennies?

In this video from NOVA scienceNOW, learn how scientists detect potential signs of life on distant planets.

An expert describes the carbon composition of diamonds, as well as the conditions necessary for diamond formation in this video segment from Nature.

This collection of 6 games develops place value, operation sense and fluency, estimation, and strategic thinking. It is played on paper with a 6- or 9-sided die (printable pdf game sheets included). Players choose a game grid with empty cells representing the digits of a computation (addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division). They take turns rolling a die and placing the resulting number in a cell on their own grids. The goal is to create a sum/difference/product/quotient that is closest to a target number. Variations include using a decimal point and scoring options. Teachers' Notes include suggestions for introducing the game, discussion questions, support suggestions, and a link to a more challenging extension (Countdown, cataloged separately).

In this interactive activity from the Building Big Web site, think like an engineer and use your knowledge of dome design to match the right type of dome to the right location in a fictitious city.

This web page describes two challenges that build fact and computational fluency as well as flexibility and reasoning. Each activity uses uses an ordinary set of double-6 dominoes, which students try to arrange into a magic rectangle and a magic square, according to given conditions. The page provides links to an interactive Dominoes Environment and a page of other domino activities (both cataloged separately).

This problem helps learners become more familiar with odd and even numbers and addition facts within five. By challenging them to justify their findings, it also develops reasoning and communication skills. The problem displays 9 dominoes and asks the student to sort them according to parity, and then into pairs totaling 5 pips. It poses questions that stimulate thinking about basic number concepts. The Teachers' Notes page offers suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension and support, and a link to an interactive Dominoes Environment (cataloged separately).

This web page describes several games and puzzles that build number sense, fact and computational fluency, flexibility, and reasoning. Each activity uses an ordinary set of double-6 dominoes. After describing dominoes generally, the page provides rules for the basic domino game and a variation, and proposes several other challenges involving addition, multiplication and prime numbers. The page includes a link to an interactive Dominoes Environment (cataloged separately).

This interactive Flash applet provides a customizable set of dominoes that users can manipulate to play games or solve puzzles. It can be used with an interactive whiteboard to facilitate group work. Users can determine the size of a set (up to double-9), remove individual dominoes, rotate and move them, and change their size. The Teachers' Notes page includes a link to page containing domino games and challenges (cataloged separately).

This dice game combines practice with basic number facts with strategic thinking. Students first are challenged to determine the rules of the game by watching a video of a game being played. The game is accompanied by a Teachers' Resource page that includes suggestions for approaching the problem, questions, extension ideas, and tips for support.

Explore tunneling splitting in double well potentials. This classic problem describes many physical systems, including covalent bonds, Josephson junctions, and two-state systems such as spin 1/2 particles and ammonia molecules.

This video segment adapted from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center discusses how a drought can have negative effects locally, for example by increasing the number of forest fires, and also globally, for example by impacting air quality thousands of miles away.

This video segment adapted from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center describes El Niño, how it forms, and the chain reaction of consequences it triggers around the globe.