Math-Sci-Guy

This printout of some NASA news article headings gives teachers the chance to discuss the crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which happened because one contracted company built part of the computer to think in metric units and another built a different part to think in imperial units. That's $193 million wasted because people didn't carefully label their units! The back of the printout has the SI unit prefixes, so this can be an introduction to them, and how metric conversion is so much simpler

This is the handout for the Observing the Environment lab that I give during the Observation, Measurement, & Mapping unit. While completing it, students will observe a feature or object and make observations/inferences about it. I use this as an opportunity to take the class outside. Examples of objects/features to take students to are a boulder, unique flower, tree, or dirt pile. I like to take my classes to a grassy depression and hope they infer that it is a (purposely-designed) drainage d

This is the handout for the Density lab that I give during the Observation, Measurement, & Mapping unit. While completing it, students will measure masses and volumes of various substances and then calculate their densities. Feel free to modify it to suit the materials you have at your school, remove the scribble if you want students to write their data directly on this lab page instead of in their journals, etc. Materials Required: triple-beam balances, ruler, graduated cylinders, calculato

This is a simple one-page fill-in-the-blank notes sheet to use while introducing Latitude and Longitude to students. An answer key is included.