Math-Sci-Guy

Enjoy this laboratory activity about Latitude and Longitude! It gives students practice reading and using the latitude & longitude coordinate system on various maps. Specific skills practiced are reading locations on a map, plotting locations on a map, contemplating time zones and how they relate to Earth's rotation and solar noon vs clock noon. Note: Parts of the lab refer to the ESRT. This is New York State's Earth Science Reference Tables. Even if you don't teach in New York State, the

Just like in the many disaster movies, this laboratory activity will allow students to investigate the effects of an asteroid hitting the earth. Students will drop plastic beads onto a tray of sand, causing impact craters from two different heights. They will measure the widths and depths of these craters, then answer questions that discuss their findings and relate it to the solar system, historical events, and possible real-life effects.

This laboratory activity is about watersheds in New York State and the USA. It lets students explore some major watersheds and gives them experience noting specific features. Most of these pictures are created as shapes in MS Word, so they do not get grainy when printed. Note: Parts of the lab refer to the ESRT. This is New York State's Earth Science Reference Tables. Even if you don't teach in New York State, they are a fantastic resource (both of information and to help students practice findi

This laboratory activity gives students practice reading and working with topographic maps. They will also be drawing profile diagrams for each of the maps they use. Some of the questions are designed to force students to research symbols that they will find on maps.

This activity guides students in studying how spherical the earth is. I would use this after students have already learned the term "oblate sphereoid," so that you can then use this to discuss with them How oblate is it? Students will do some simple calculations (basic ratios) to discover the relief that the highest and lowest elevations on Earth would have if the earth were shrunk down to the size of a (32cm diameter) classroom globe.

This laboratory activity about Earthquake Depths is a great math-science crossover! It gives students practice with latitude & longitude and helps them process the fact that earthquakes don't just happen at Earth's surface but at varying depths. Specific skills practiced are plotting latitude & longitude coordinates on a map, plotting longitude vs depth on a graph, and visualizing the same data from multiple perspectives. This is real earthquake data from actual earthquakes in South America.

Everybody loves Christmas songs, but as teachers we also prize mental stimulation. This activity has the names of many popular Christmas songs written verbosely; the goal is to figure out the original titles. This is a great activity to do on the last day before winter break. (After doing this with my students, some of them learned that they don't know as many Christmas songs as they thought they did, and others learned that they know a lot of Christmas songs but only remember them after hear

In this laboratory activity, students will use a loop of string and two tacks to draw one circle and four different ellipses. They will then measure the focal distance and major axis of each of these, and use this data to calculate the eccentricity of each ellipse (and the circle). The analysis questions lead students to discover the overall patterns and apply the knowledge learned in this activity to planetary orbits. Note: Parts of the lab refer to the ESRT. This is New York State's Earth

Bundle includes: Lab Report Format (handout) Lab Report Format (for printing poster-size) Correct-This-Lab This is the format for all labs students turn in throughout the year. It works great for me for the NYS Regents lab requirement, but is a great format anywhere. I've also made a printout to be used as an activity with the class, picking out the errors of a "bad" lab and correcting them. I have included Word documents and PDFs for your convenience.

In this laboratory activity, students will use foam spheres and a lamp to recreate the Earth's moon's phases. They will then draw a diagram depicting/summarizing their results. The analysis questions lead students to think about the Earth-Moon-Sun system from various perspectives, including at precise times (eclipses), and relate this back to cyclic changes. All images are created as shapes in MS Word, so their quality does not degrade when printed.

This printout gives students an opportunity to explore a (possibly) real-life situation, empirically determine the minimum number of moves required to accomplish the task, then gather the data and find a pattern to describe it. The activity is completely printable (which also gives students the opportunity to do something with their hands (cutting) and lets them practice fine motor coordination, though if you want to spice it up students could cut discs out of corrugated cardboard (

This lesson has structured (Google Doc) notes that walk through a real-life example, teaching students about limiting factors/carrying capacity. The teacher will walk students through the introduction, then students will read the illustrated story to fill in the rest of the notes on their own.

Kids do lots of homework/practice/exercises, generally for a test. I wanted to give my students something that wasn't tested but would still be valuable to their lives/development. So far, I have typed up enrichment activities that have kids exercising, baking, improving how well they deal with uncertainty, typing equations (instead of hodgepodging it), learning an easier quadratic formula (because I'm a math teacher, after all), learning new study skills, improving communication, and learning