The ASPIRE Lab is now one of the most innovative and interactive science education websites available on the Internet. You will find not only fun interactive labs, but well designed and produced curriculum content, created by teachers for teachers. The powerful combination of inquiry-based content, along with interactive, hands-on labs provides a powerful visualization tool for you and your students to use. Best of all, the ASPIRE Lab is free!

This visual representation is to help give you an idea of the size and scale of the universe. Each image is 10 times bigger or smaller than the one that comes before it or after it. The numbers are written using exponential notation. This is a convenient way scientists use to write very large or very small numbers. For example, how do you know what an exponential number really means? Let’s show you briefly how to figure it out.

This lesson will explore how the force of gravity, acts upon a luge and rider. It teaches how gravity has an influence on speed and time of the luge run. Students will select various values for gravity and collect times for luge runs.

Si usted mira la luna cada noche, usted ve que la forma aparece a cambiar. ¿La luna realmente se desforma? Por supuesto que no, solamente su aspecto de la tierra cambia. ¿Cómo este trabajo? Dentro de la respuesta la parte de la luna que recibe luz del sol, y la parte de la luna que no recibe luz del sol.

We are constantly being exposed to the behavior of gases. Each time we pump up a tire, blow up a balloon, use a spray can, or experience the cooling of gases as they escape from a gas storage container, we are reminded of how gases behave with changes in temperature, volume, pressure, or number of particles. In an astronomical scale, we know that star formation involves contraction of gas clouds to produce dense, high-pressure cores capable of fusion reactions. These labs will help your students investigate the behavior of gases due to changes in variables like volume, temperature, and number of particles. This experience with molecular motion in gases can be extended to help students understand perpetual motion in all states of matter. Students can transfer this relationship to the change in temperature and the corresponding change in vibration of molecules in a solid.

These interactive lessons teach about Cosmic Rays by emphasizing the mystery that Cosmic Rays presented to early scientists. The scientific inquiries and investigations that Cosmic Rays prompted are interesting and important to understanding the way science works. Cosmic Rays are now being studied at research sites around the world. Much has been learned from early experiments and even more is being discovered with modern experiments, but many questions have yet to be answered.

Most students will have an intuitive sense that kinetic energy depends on how fast something is moving (speed) and how massive it is (mass). (We use speed instead of velocity, because energy is a scalar, and independent of direction.) They know that it hurts more in dodge ball when the ball is thrown with more speed than when it is thrown with less speed. They also know that is hurts more to drop a bowling ball on their foot than it does to drop a tennis ball. Exactly how mass, speed and kinetic energy are related is the purpose of this lab. Which is more important in determining kinetic energy? mass or speed? or are they of the same importance?

If you watch the moon every night, you see its shape appear to change. Does the moon really change shape? Of course not, but its appearance from Earth certainly changes. How does this work? The answer lies within the part of the moon that receives sunlight, and the part of the moon that does not receive sunlight.

This lesson reviews the basic "feel" we all have for what speed is and introduces the means for calculation and composition of various average speeds. Students calculate average speed of various snowmobiles and predict the outcome of a race.