When we look at the night sky, we see stars and the nearby planets of our own solar system. Many of those stars are actually distant galaxies and glowing clouds of dust and gases called nebulae. The universe is an immense space with distances measured in light years. The more we learn about the universe beyond our solar system, the more we realize we do not know. Students are introduced to the basic known facts about the universe, and how engineers help us explore the many mysteries of space.

This lesson describes how the circulatory system works, including the heart, blood vessels and blood. Students learn about the chambers and valves of the heart, the difference between veins and arteries, and the different components of blood. This lesson also covers the technology engineers have developed to repair the heart if it is damaged. Students also understand how the circulatory system is affected during spaceflight (e.g., astronauts lose muscle in their heart during space travel).

This compilation video contains visualizations of Earth and Space Sciences resulting from supercomputer models. The excerpted visualizations include: Ocean Planet, El Nino, Ozone 1991, Clouds, Changes in Glacier Bay, Alaska, Biosphere, Lunar Topography from the Clementine Mission, Musculoskeletal Modeling Dynamic Simulations, Simulations of the Breakup and Dynamical Evolution of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, Convective Penetration in Stellar Interiors, Topological Features of a Compressible Plasma Vortex Sheet: A Model for the Outer Heliospheric Solar Wind, R-Aquarii Jet, The Evolution of Distorted Black Holes, Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in a Supernova, Galaxy Harassment, N-Body Simulation of the Cold Dark Matter Cosmology.

Derivation of the basic MHD model from the Boltzmann equation. Discussion of MHD equilibria in cylindrical, toroidal, and noncircular tokamaks. Use of MHD equilibrium theory in poloidal field design. MHD stability theory including the Energy Principle, interchange instability, ballooning modes, second region of stability, and external kink modes. Emphasis on discovering configurations capable of achieving good confinement at high beta.

The following unit is designed to acquaint the student with the magnetic field. The assumed average student has some familiarity with the uniform gravitational field of classical Newtonian dynamics and kinematics lessons. This is not required however. The unit is meant to introduce the idea of a field through investigations of magnetic fields as produced by various common magnetic materials and direct currents. The difference between a magnetic field and a gravitational field is that a gravitational field, in the experience of a student, always points downward and is always of the same strength (9.8 m/s2). Magnetic fields are not limited to one direction or strength, in the student's experience. That is, all students are assumed to have noticed that some magnets are stronger than others. Further, all students will know, by the mid-point of this unit, that magnetic fields are inherently loop shaped. One important similarity does exist between the magnetic field of the earth and the gravitational field of the earth: both are mysteriously produced by the same object. Thus, these two fields are easily confused in the mind of the student, and are subject to 'common sense' interpretations that may be at odds with scientific explanation. The 'common sense' interpretations can be hard to modify. Indeed, students are likely to speak as if all magnetic interactions are attractive (e.g., 'the magnetic personality') even though they also know from experience that it is hard to force opposite poles of different magnets together.

In this activity, students will learn about the magnetosphere, the effects of solar activity, and the importance of the Earth's magnetic field in protecting living organisms from solar radiation. Background information, a materials list, procedures, outcomes, and standards are included. Links to a glossary and to additional information are embedded in the text.

This educational brief provides an overview of the layers of the atmosphere, the effects of the solar wind upon them, and how these effects are mitigated by Earth's magnetic field. It also describes OMNIWeb, an internet-based data retrieval interface for obtaining datasets on solar energetic particles.

This module will introduce you to many of the basic properties of matter including atoms, ions, elements, molecules, and density. You will use real data from plasma physics research to further explore the basic properties of matter.

This article presents text, images, and animations of a solar flare and coronal mass ejection that occurred in August 1999. Links to related topics and articles are included

The Voyager and Pioneer Spacecraft have detected large-scale quasi-periodic plasma fluctuations in the outer heliosphere beyond 20 AU. A plasma vortex sheet model can explain these fluctuations and the observed correlations between various physical variables. The large scale outer heliosphere is modeled by solving the 3-D compressible magneto-hydrodynamic equations involving three interacting shear layers. Computations were done on a Cray computer at the NASA Center for Computational Sciences. Six cases are animated: Weak magnetic field and strong magnetic field, each at three values of tau, the vortex street characteristic time. Contours of density are shown as dark transparent tubes. Critical points of the velocity field are represented by Glyphs. Vortex cores are shown in orange and blue.