This lesson aims to help students with quadratic functions y = ax2 + bx + c. This is the next step after linear functions bx + c. The lesson begins with three quadratics and their graphs (three parabolas): y = x2 - 2x + (0 or 1 or 2). The prerequisite or co-requisite is some working experience with algebra, like factoring x2 -2x into x(x-2). The objective is to connect four things: the formula for y, the graph of y (a parabola), the roots of y and the minimum or maximum of y. The particular example y = x2 – 2x could be repeated by the teacher, for emphasis. The lesson will take more than one class period (and this is deserved!). The breaks allow time to consider parabolas starting with -x2 and opening downward. A physical path would be one (dangerous?) activity.

Video lecture on quadratic equations and their graphs. The video connects the equation, the graph, the roots, and the minimum or maximum of the quadratic function.

The topic of this video is energy in general, and specifically the ways we can quantify it. In order to make the concepts accessible to a broad audience, this video focuses on everyday things and events. How is it that energy plays a part in a child riding a scooter? How is the energy we consume in playing related to the energy on the food we eat? This video poses these questions to the class and challenges them to put a list of five such items into an ordering from most energy to least.

The scope of this video lesson consists in studying the sets of Rational and Irrational numbers. It is best suited for an advanced math course: Algebra 2 or higher.

This video aims to provide an illustrative lesson about the respiratory system in birds and how the adaptations of that system over time have made it different than that of other living creatures, especially mammals. Birds are omnipresent in our lives, and students will come to understand and appreciate the fascinating inner workings of these beautiful creatures. This lesson discusses avian features and differences for 20 to 25 minutes, with approximately 20 minutes of in-class student activities.

The topic of photosynthesis is a fundamental concept in biology, chemistry, and earth science. Educational studies have found that despite classroom presentations, most students retain their naive idea that a plant's mass is mostly derived from the soil, and not from the air. To call students' attention to this misconception, at the beginning of this lesson we will provide a surprising experimental result so that students will confront their mental mistake. Next, we will help students better envision photosynthesis by modeling where the atoms come from in this important process that produces food for the planet. This lesson can be completed in 50-60 minutes, with the students working on in-class activities during 20-25 minutes of the lesson. As a prerequisite, students need an introductory lesson on photosynthesis, something that includes the overall chemical equation. If students have already studied the intracellular photosynthetic process in detail, this video can still be very helpful because students often miss the big picture about photosynthesis. Materials needed include red, white and black LEGO bricks (described in downloadable hand-out) or strips of red, white and black paper plus paper clips (directions provided in downloadable hand-out). In addition to class discussions, the major in-class activity of this video involves the students' modeling with LEGO bricks or colored paper where the atoms come from in photosynthesis.

There are many misconceptions about the chemistry concept, “Conservation of Mass”. Thus, the aim of this video lesson is to teach students about the chemical concept of Conservation of Mass through several chemistry experiments. The students will carry out experiments while assisting a fortune teller named Pak Belalang to gain victory for his kingdom. In an effort to help Pak Belalang, students should be able to answer all the questions related to the Conservation of Mass that are posed by an evil witch. In this video, materials such as a box of matches, a closed and open container, a box of panadol soluble tablets (Alka-Seltzer), and weighing scales are needed. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to see that mass is “conserved”. The lesson will take up to 60 minutes to complete.

Part One of this video lesson will explore the science that explains soap bubbles, as well as the application of this knowledge to other areas, such as architecture and biology. We first introduce the concept of surface tension. In Part Two of this video lesson, students will learn where the colors of soap bubbles come from and also learn what soap bubbles and telescopes have in common. The students will first make a connection between light and waves waves and will then go on to explore various characteristics of waves through a series of classroom activities.

Flying kites is a popular hobby in Malaysia and very much part of the culture. This lesson looks at kite flying science to introduce basic ideas related to the dynamics of kite flying and can be used as an extension of a physics lesson, especially after the students have learned about forces. It will focus on some of the concepts such as weight, thrust, lift and drag. It is a fun way to introduce the forces acting upon a kite and the scientific principles that allow a kite to fly. The lesson is suitable for students in secondary school. It will help students relate to the effect of forces and gives an introduction to the science of flight. As an added value, the video will also share some information about Malaysian kites which are “tailless”. The Malaysian kite is called “Wau” (pronounced “wow”), and there are many distinctive designs since each Malaysian state has its own official Wau. Malaysia has 14 states. The break activities included are to be conducted in the classroom, and students are to work in small groups on the questions given in the lesson. Students are to carry out two simple experiments to study how air flows on a kite.

This module is about a particular effect of the frequency, which is the stroboscopic effect. The lesson discusses and demonstrates low frequency phenomena - less than 16 Hz - that can usually be observed clearly by the human eye, as well as high frequency phenomena - more than 25 Hz - that are difficult for the human eye to catch. This video also explores and demonstrates how high frequency phenomena can be observed by freezing the fast moving phenomena using a device called a stroboscope. The only prerequisite for this video is that students understand the definition of the frequency of a periodic phenomenon.

The main objective of this video lesson is to bring the students' attention to the importance of basic and natural sciences in our lives. The lesson will introduce a topic (sustainable energy) that is related mainly to chemistry and is not usually covered directly in a high school curriculum. We hope that this lesson will show students how important and useful the natural and basic sciences are not only for our daily lives, but also for sustainable development. The lesson will present creative and challenging ideas on the topic of alternative energies. It is hoped that students will be inspired by the introduction of these ideas, and that they will develop the confidence to come up with creative ideas themselves. Background for this lesson is based on fundamental concepts in chemistry (mainly), biology, physics and environmental science.

This learning video presents an introduction to graph theory through two fun, puzzle-like problems: ''The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg'' and ''The Chinese Postman Problem''. Any high school student in a college-preparatory math class should be able to participate in this lesson. Materials needed include: pen and paper for the students; if possible, printed-out copies of the graphs and image that are used in the module; and a blackboard or equivalent. During this video lesson, students will learn graph theory by finding a route through a city/town/village without crossing the same path twice. They will also learn to determine the length of the shortest route that covers all the roads in a city/town/village. To achieve these two learning objectives, they will use nodes and arcs to create a graph and represent a real problem.

This lesson is an introductory topic in thermodynamics, on the conversion of energy. The aim of this video is to support students in visualizing the conversion of energy and its importance in real world applications. For this reason, everyday examples are used to help students see the conversion of energy around them. Energy conversion is explored through a simple example of generating electricity for lighting up a shadow puppetry play in a village. The chain process of energy conversion is illustrated until the end product of electricity. This example of electricity generation is further illustrated in an actual industrial setting by taking the viewers to a Power Plant, where viewers will see and hear the explanation of a mechanical engineer on the equipment used to produce electricity that we use in homes and businesses. This important concept of energy conversion is crucial for students to understand as a basis for learning other concepts in Thermodynamics.

How is it that all cells in our body have the same genes, yet cells in different tissues express different genes? A basic notion in biology that most high school students fail to conceptualize is the fact that all cells in the animal or human body contain the same DNA, yet different cells in different tissues express, on the one hand, a set of common genes, and on the other, express another set of genes that vary depending on the type of tissue and the stage of development. In this video lesson, the student will be reminded that genes in a cell/tissue are expressed when certain conditions in the nucleus are met. Interestingly, the system utilized by the cell to ensure tissue specific gene expression is rather simple. Among other factors - all discussed fully in the lesson - the cells make use of a tiny scaffold known as the “Nuclear Matrix or Nucleo-Skeleton”. This video lesson spans 20 minutes and provides 5 exercises for students to work out in groups and in consultation with their classroom teacher. The entire duration of the video demonstration and exercises should take about 45-50 minutes, or equivalent to one classroom session. There are no supplies needed for students’ participation in the provided exercises. They will only need their notebooks and pens. However, the teacher may wish to emulate the demonstrations used in the video lesson by the presenter and in this case simple material can be used as those used in the video. These include play dough, pencils, rubber bands (to construct the nuclear matrix model), a tennis ball and 2-3 Meters worth of shoe laces. The students should be aware of basic information about DNA folding in the nucleus, DNA replication, gene transcription, translation and protein synthesis.

This lesson introduces students to the “Tragedy of the Commons,” an extended metaphor for problems of shared environmental or man-made resources that are overused and eventually depleted. In this metaphor, shared resources are compared to a common grazing pasture, or “commons,” on which any dairy farmer can graze as many cows as he/she wishes. If too many cows are added to the commons, they will overeat the grass in the pasture and the shared resource will become depleted – a disadvantage to everyone. In this lesson, students will be inspired to think about possible solutions to this problem. To get there, they will use basic math to frame the problem and will discover how useful this can be in considering consequences of various actions. Most importantly, they will become comfortable with the concept of problems of shared resources – and will learn to recognize, and seek out, examples all around them. An exposure to algebra 1 and basic functions is the only math prerequisite necessary. The lesson will take around 50 minutes to complete and the required materials for this lesson are paper and pens or pencils, as well as some sort of prize to provide the winning team with in the final activity. For all five activities, students are asked to work in groups of 4, but groups of 3 or 5 would also be okay. Students will work with their groups to discuss the logic behind the tragedy of the commons, to consider some options for preventing this tragedy and to examine examples of problems of shared resources that are relevant to them. They will also come up with functions that fit behavior described in the video, and be asked to think about the behavior of functions provided in the video and accompanying materials.

it would be ideal if students already have learned that DNA is the genetic material, and that DNA is made up of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs. It also would help if students already know that each human has two versions of every piece of DNA in their genome, one from mom and one from dad. The lesson will take about one class period, with roughly 30 minutes of footage and 30 minutes of activities.

This video is meant to be a fun, hands-on session that gets students to think hard about how machines work. It teaches them the connection between the geometry that they study and the kinematics that engineers use -- explaining that kinematics is simply geometry in motion. In this lesson, geometry will be used in a way that students are not used to. Materials necessary for the hands-on activities include two options: pegboard, nails/screws and a small saw; or colored construction paper, thumbtacks and scissors. Some in-class activities for the breaks between the video segments include: exploring the role of geometry in a slider-crank mechanism; determining at which point to locate a joint or bearing in a mechanism; recognizing useful mechanisms in the students' communities that employ the same guided motion they have been studying.

The major purpose of this lesson is to promote the learning of eye function by associating eye problems and diseases to parts of the eye that are affected. Included in this module are discussions and activities that teach about eye components and their functions. The main activity is dissecting a cow eye, which in many high schools is part of the anatomy curriculum. This lesson extends the curriculum by discussing eye diseases that students might be familiar with. An added fun part of the lesson is discussion of what various animals see.

This video lesson will introduce students to algorithmic thinking through the use of a popular field in graph theory—social networking. Specifically, by acting as nodes in a graph (i.e. people in a social network), the students will experientially gain an understanding of graph theory terminology and distance in a graph (i.e. number of introductions required to meet a target person). Once the idea of distance in a graph has been built, the students will discover Dijkstra's Algorithm. The lesson should take approximately 90 minutes and can be comfortably partitioned across two class sessions if necessary (see the note in the accompanying Teacher Guide). There are no special supplies needed for this class and all necessary hand-outs can be downloaded from this website.

Beavers are generally known as the engineers of the animal world. In fact the beaver is MIT's mascot! But honeybees might be better engineers than beavers! And in this lesson involving geometry in interesting ways, you'll see why! Honeybees, over time, have optimized the design of their beehives. Mathematicians can do no better. In this lesson, students will learn how to find the areas of shapes (triangles, squares, hexagons) in terms of the radius of a circle drawn inside of these shapes. They will also learn to compare those shapes to see which one is the most efficient for beehives. This lesson also discusses the three-dimensional shape of the honeycomb and shows how bees have optimized that in multiple dimensions. During classroom breaks, students will do active learning around the mathematics involved in this engineering expertise of honeybees. Students should be conversant in geometry, and a little calculus and differential equations would help, but not mandatory.