It's...

....a rock drill bit. This particular bit came from the Sterling Hill Mining Musesum in Ogdensburg, New Jersey.

Zinc was mined in northwest New Jersey until recently. It is also home to a highly concentrated number of fluorescent minerals. I highly recommend a visit if you're in the region. Many of the tour guides are gentlemen previously employed as miners at the mine - they provide quite a perspective as you tour the actual mine. In addition, there's a wonderful gift shop filled with various mining artifacts - I love my dynamite box! Great for school groups as well as families.

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What Is It? is a feature you can add to your classroom. Once a month, or thereabouts, put out something new and ask students to try to identify it. If they figure it out correctly, give them extra credit, a prize, a high five or bragging rights!

Observation: The Sense of Touch

Observations can be made with any of our senses (though, we tend to avoid the sense of taste in the science lab). This activity gives students a chance to test their sense of touch.

Number a bunch of socks with a permanent marker. Place a household item (non-breakable) into each sock.



Students will use their sense of touch to identify the objects. Students can feel the objects through the sock or, if the socks are long enough, reach their hand into the sock to feel the object without looking at it.

You can have students record their findings in any number of ways:
1. A list of words describing the object.
2. A sketch of the object's shape.
3. A hypothesis as to what the object is.

I often have students make a data table that incorporates 2 or all 3 of these pieces
of data (along with the sock number).

I like to have enough socks so that there's one for each student. To keep things moving and in order, I'll call out when it's time to switch socks, at which time, all the socks will move to the next person.

After students have observed all socks, I'll ask for their hypotheses for each sock number. Then I'll reveal what was actually inside.

What Is It?

Got any ideas?

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What Is It? is a feature you can add to your classroom. Once a month, or thereabouts, put out something new and ask students to try to identify it. If they figure it out correctly, give them extra credit, a prize, a high five or bragging rights!

Electricity: The Human Circuit

First, you'll need to find the "equipment". You're looking for some sort of 'toy' that has two contact points, like those shown above. The toy will 'do' someting when the circuit is completed: mine are "ice" cubes that light up in water, I've seen Easter chicks that cheep when the circuit is complete. Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly where to find these, you just have to keep your eyes open. My best advice is to check out Walgreens/CVS/RiteAid around the holidays.

Once you have procured your supplies, the activity is very simple:

Have the class stand in a large circle. Everyone needs to hold hands. You'll be a part of the circle, one of your hands will hold a student's hand. In the other hand, you'll hold the 'toy', with one of your fingers covering one of the contact points. You'll need a student to stand on the other side of the 'toy', covering the other contact point.

If the entire class is holding hands, you'll have a complete circuit and the "ice" cubes will light up, the chick will cheep, etc. If there is a pair that isn't making contact, nothing will happen.

Expand the activity by looking for some conductors and insulators to include in your circuit!

In addition to a discussion of complete vs. incomplete circuits, it's also a chance to talk about electrolytes in your body (hence the ability for electricity to travel through bodies).

Plants: Seed Germination

Each student will need a sandwich-size zip-top bag, a paper towel, and several seeds (dried beans from the grocery store will work, as well as regular garden seeds).

Get the paper towel wet and then wring out all the excess water. Flatten the towel and fold in half and then in half again (in the opposite direction this time). Slide the towel into the bag. Place the seeds in a line about an inch from the bottom of the bag (about an inch between the seeds). With the bag lying flat on the table, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal the bag. Now observe. You may wish to have students make observations in a journal. With a good seal, the bag should have enough moisture and not require any additional water.

I prefer this method over planting seeds in dirt for two reasons:

1 - No dirt=much easier clean-up.

2 - You can actually wantch the seed germinate.... which part emerges first, where does it emerge from, etc.

Plate Tectonics: Snack Tectonics

What can you do with fruit roll-ups, graham crackers and frosting in your science class?

Have a yummy snack?

You could, but try out this great activity first... then have your snack!



In this Windows to the Universe activity, students use these items to model the different types of plate boundaries: divergent, convergent (oceanic vs. continental and continental vs. continental) and transform.

The fruit roll-ups act as the oceanic crust and the graham crackers are the continental crust (because continental crust is thicker than oceanic). The frosting serves as the mantle, on which the pieces of crust can move around.


Windows to the Universe also provides these great graphics you can turn into PowerPoint slides, overheads, or place on your students' lab sheets.

With materials like these, you'll immediately have your students' attention. And the results aren't too shabby either!



In my experience, the most exciting result comes from the continental - continental convergent boundary - mountains are created!!

Scientific Thinking: Dogs and Turnips

Scientists use the information they find/learn/acquire along with their own background knowledge to make hypotheses to explain what they're observing. As they acquire more information, those hypotheses can change to incorporate the new information. Scientific knowledge constantly changes.

This activity demonstrates this process, in a classroom-friendly, time-friendly manner. It's a new activity to me, but looks like a keeper. Exact instructions can be found here, but here's a synopsis.

A long sentence - The big fat red dog walked into the little white house on the prarie carrying a bone and ate his bowl of turnips - is printed and cut into individual words, which are placed in an envelope.

Students select 5 words from the envelope. Using the words they've selected, they hypothesize what the story is about.


An additional 5 words are selected. Using all 10 words, the students tweak their hypothesis to incorporate the new information.


Another 5 words are selected. Using all 15 words, the students refine their hypotheses some more.


Finally, all the remaining words are removed from the envelope and a final hypothesis is created.

Even after all the groups have all the information, they will likely have variations in their hypotheses. Why? What does this tell us about science?


Additionally, Liz LaRosa blogged about her use of the activity and has been generous enough to share her worksheets for use with this activity. If you haven't checked out www.middleschoolscience.com, you really need to - it's loaded with great stuff!