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Listed under:  Science  >  Scientific inquiry  >  Experiments
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Stomp Rocket Design Challenge

This resource provides a scaffold for students to complete a design challenge. The design challenge requires students to create a stomp rocket that can travel to a chosen planet in the solar system. The design challenge can also be used to investigate forces and energy. It can be delivered over a number of lessons, or it ...

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How to Make Perfect Popcron

This informative digital text about how to make popcorn is for teachers to read aloud to students. The instructions use text and images to list the equipment needed and the steps involved in making popcorn. The resource includes a teaching sequence related to the Big Six components of literacy development (oral language, ...

Downloadable

Unit for Reception to Year 2 Butterflies: Engaging with nature

This unit of work engages students in preparing butterfly gardens in their schoolgrounds. It explores the characteristics of living and non-living things, features of caterpillars and butterflies, the lifecycle of butterflies, survival requirements, and the characteristics of butterfly gardens. The unit includes worksheets, ...

Downloadable

Unit for Year 5 to 6 Butterflies: Engaging with nature

This unit of work engages students in preparing butterfly gardens in their schoolgrounds. It explores scientific entomology, features of insects (including butterflies), the contributions that butterflies make to a healthy environments, and the characteristics of butterfly gardens. The unit includes worksheets, assessment ...

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Modelling the Seasons

This resource provides a scaffold for students to undertake a simple experiment. Students use a world globe and a heat lamp to investigate how the tilt of the Earth’s axis causes the seasons.

Online

Sphero slalom lesson

In this lesson students explore slalom sports and how competitors maximise speed when completing a course. Students research different slalom sports and then share their findings with the class. Students investigate the impact of distance and friction on time to complete a course through digital and unplugged activities. ...

Downloadable

Walking on Crushed Glass

This is an illustrated story of a real-life engineering solution designed to recycle glass waste and reuse it as reinforcement for concrete used in footpaths. The book explains the process of innovation to reach a viable solution. It shows the creativity, innovation and collaboration required to provide a solution that ...

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Food innovation and molecular gastronomy lesson

In this lesson, students explore connections between science, design, and technologies through the lens of food innovation and food science. Students look at interesting and unusual food products, using food textures as a jumping off point to explore the relationship between chemistry and food. Students then experiment ...

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Designing urban carbon sinks lesson

In this lesson, students learn about the role of vegetation as carbon sinks, conduct field work to evaluate local carbon sinks and explore urban design issues. Students asses their own carbon footprints using the carbon footprint calculator, learn about carbon offset, carbon farming and carbon storage programs. Students ...

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Industrial design challenge – separating materials lesson

is lesson provides a great introduction to the idea of separating mixtures and enables students to consider separation as a process that operates on macroscopic levels. Students also learn about waste management and recycling processes in Australia. The lesson provides students with an opportunity to engage in hands-on ...

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Four Corners: Megafires

Are we approaching the 'age of megafires'? It might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but some scientists believe there is cause for concern. Watch this clip to find out how bushfires as we know them are changing. Discover why.

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ABC News: Dr Karl discusses mining asteroids

Imagine an asteroid, half the size of a football field, hurtling towards Earth at a speed of 28,000 kilometres per hour! Watch this clip to find out about Asteroid 2012 DA14 and whether it poses any threat to Earth. You will also discover why mining prospectors are keen to capture asteroids such as this one. Could the next ...

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For the Juniors: How does rice get to the supermarket?

Do you like brown rice or white rice? Do you know why they look different? This clip shows how rice grains from the farm are cleaned, milled and packed into bags. Discover how many different foods can be made from rice.

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Friction: Friend or foe?

What part does the force of friction play in our everyday lives? Friction can be an advantage (friend) or a problem (foe). Join interviewer Doug Traction and professors Static, Slide, Rolling and Fluid at the National Tribology Research Centre as they have forceful fun investigating friction. This video won a prize in the ...

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Numbers Count: Chance and playing with dice

Have you ever played a game that required you to roll a dice? Did you know that you have equal chances of rolling any of the six numbers? Can you think of another experiment where you have an equal chance of getting one result or the other?

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Four Corners: Ecological effects of bushfires

Did you know that Australia is the most flammable continent on Earth? Watch this clip to discover how bushfires impact natural ecosystems, and how the increasing global threat of bushfires may affect Australia. Australian scientists explain the ecological consequences of fire and a US expert describes his concerns for the future.

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Elliot and the Surfing Scientist: Using a lens to bend light

How can a water-filled plastic straw be used to decode a secret message? Watch as the Surfing Scientist demonstrates how lenses with a curved surface do curious things to light.

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Elliot and the Surfing Scientist: Friction between paper experiment

Are you strong enough to pull two sheets of paper apart? What about two books with the pages intertwined? Watch this experiment performed by Ruben Meerman, the Surfing Scientist, and find out how he tests the presence of friction between pieces of paper.

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Catalyst: Predicting earthquakes

Will scientists ever be able to accurately predict earthquakes? Imagine the number of lives that could be saved if this were possible. Dr Maryanne Demasi joins a group of researchers drilling into one of the most earthquake-prone regions on Earth as they try to improve earthquake prediction to add precious seconds to earthquake ...

Interactive

Experimental probability

This is an interactive resource that enables students to conduct virtual probability experiments using a spinner or a pair of dice. The student can manipulate the relative sizes of the different coloured segments of the spinner or the numbers on the faces of the dice to investigate the effect of these changes on probability. ...