Students learn about traffic lights and their importance in maintaining public safety and order. Using a Parallax® Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, students work in teams on the engineering challenge to build a traffic light with a specific behavior. In the process, they learn about light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and how their use can save energy. Students also design their own requirements based on real-world observations as they learn about traffic safety and work towards an interesting goal within the realm of what is important in practice. Knowledge gained from the activity is directly transferrable to future activities, and skills learned are scalable to more ambitious class projects.

" The main objective of this course is to give broad insight into the different facets of transportation systems, while providing a solid introduction to transportation demand and cost analyses. As part of the core in the Master of Science in Transportation program, the course will not focus on a specific transportation mode but will use the various modes to apply the theoretical and analytical concepts presented in the lectures and readings. Introduces transportation systems analysis, stressing demand and economic aspects. Covers the key principles governing transportation planning, investment, operations and maintenance. Introduces the microeconomic concepts central to transportation systems. Topics covered include economic theories of the firm, the consumer, and the market, demand models, discrete choice analysis, cost models and production functions, and pricing theory. Application to transportation systems include congestion pricing, technological change, resource allocation, market structure and regulation, revenue forecasting, public and private transportation finance, and project evaluation; covering urban passenger transportation, freight, aviation and intelligent transportation systems."

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, the cast tries to design and build a bridge made out of drinking straws that will support the weight of 200 pennies.

This activity is a classroom activity where students predict and test Newton's First Law of Motion as it applied to the movement of cargo in the bed of a truck.

This interactive activity, from the Building Big Web site, explores tunneling and the tools and methods used to do the job.

This video discusses how methane digesters turn waste from dairy cows, food garbage, and other organic matter into usable gases and other fuels.

Unit plans for Grades K-2 and 3-5 are a regular feature of the magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The plans draw on articles and resources in a themed issue and are aligned with national science and language arts standards. This unit is designed to provide elementary students with the opportunity to investigate how the annual rings in trees help scientists learn about past climates. It uses hands-on experiences and nonfiction text to answer the unit question: How do trees help scientists learn about the past?

The work of anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict did much to popularize the notion that accepted American standards of behavior were not found universally in other cultures. Traditional gender norms therefore were culturally and historically determined rather than derived from nature. In the following Collier's article from 1952, Dr. Judson T. and Mary G. Landis invoked Mead's work to investigate contradictory assessments of the "typical" American male as either dominant and aggressive or blundering and dependent. The authors examined findings of social scientists that compared male and female survival rates, achievement, and sexual performance. They argued that while men were, in fact, the "weaker" sex biologically, their struggle to conform to cultural ideals of superiority and dominance often led to failure and difficulties in relationships. Their conclusion--that "in most families the man is, and has to be, the 'stronger,' he has to be the bulwark for the family" because of greater fluctuations in "endocrinological functioning" of women than in men--shows the power that ideas of biological determinism held even in the social science community.

In 1904, in the midst of a bitter stockyard strike, socialist writer Upton Sinclair's two-month visit to Chicago's "Packingtown" area provided him with a wealth of material that he turned into his best-selling novel, The Jungle. The book is best known for revealing the unsanitary process by which animals became meat products. Yet Sinclair's primary concern was not with the goods that were produced, but with the workers who produced them. Throughout the book, as in this chapter, he described with great accuracy the horrifying physical conditions under which immigrant packing plant workers and their families worked and lived, portraying the collapse of immigrant culture under the relentless pressure of industrial capitalism. Despite his sympathies, as a middle-class reformer Sinclair was oblivious to the vibrancy of immigrant communities beyond the reach of bosses, where immigrants found solidarity and hope. Sinclair's graphic descriptions of how meat products were manufactured were an important factor in the subsequent passage of the federal Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Act in 1906. Sinclair later commented about the effect of his novel: "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit its stomach."

This is a working document of websites with lessons and activities to use with students in grades K-2 on usernames and passwords.

Students explore the response of springs to forces as a way to begin to understand elastic solid behavior. They gain experience in data collection, spring constant calculation, and comparison and interpretation of graphs and material properties to elucidate material behavior. Conduct this activity before proceeding to the associated lesson.

In this activity, students interpret the motion of a car using its related velocity and acceleration vectors.

This article provides tips and strategies for effectively integrating digital media into classroom instruction. Resources provided are suitable for preschool and elementary students.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, known informally as the McMahon Act, established the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as a federal institution to have total control of developments in the field of atomic energy. To replace the predominate image of atomic weapons as destructive, the AEC began a public relations campaign to show the atom's positive side. Hopes for a utopian society with atomic-powered cars and airplanes had died down by the late 1940s. But the promise of atomic energy for medical research, diagnosis, and treatment and for preventing starvation through duplicating photosynthesis remained. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a revision to the McMahon Act opening development to private industry. In the following article from the popular magazine Look published a year later, David O. Woodbury reprised the "utopian promise" rhetoric of the late 1940s, as he discussed the potential of radioisotopes for health, food production, and industry, as well as the production of electric power through atomic energy. The first nuclear power plant began operation in 1957 and facilities proliferated during the next two decades. Due to a drop in demand for electricity, a strong grassroots antinuclear movement concerned about safety and the disposal of nuclear waste, and national anxiety after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, no new facilities were built after 1979 and many have been shut down.

Learn how to add vectors. Drag vectors onto a graph, change their length and angle, and sum them together. The magnitude, angle, and components of each vector can be displayed in several formats.

In this activity, students take the age old concept of etch-a-sketch a step further. Using iron filings, students begin visualizing magnetic field lines. To do so, students use a compass to read the direction of the magnet's magnetic field. Then, students observe the behavior of iron filings near that magnet as they rotate the filings about the magnet. Finally, students study the behavior of iron filings suspended in mineral oil which displays the magnetic field in three dimensions.

Students observe and discuss a simple model of a wet scrubber to understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.

Focuses on the geotechnical aspects of hazardous waste management, with specific emphasis on the design of land-based waste containment structures and hazardous waste remediation. Introduction to hazardous waste; definition of hazardous waste, regulatory requirements, waste characteristics, geo-chemistry, and contaminant transport. The design and operation of waste containment structures, landfills, impoundments, and mine-waste disposal. The characterization and remediation of contaminated sites, the superfund law, preliminary site assessment, site investigation techniques, and remediation technologies. Monitoring requirements.

This video is an introduction to the global issue of water. It examines questions like "How can there be a water shortage when we are surrounded by water?". This video is part of the Sustainability Learning Suites, made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. See 'Learn more about this resource' for Learning Objectives and Activities.

This video looks at how water is provided for our use through the hydrologic cycle. It also explains how global climate change disturbs the storage of water in the various global compartments. This video is part of the Sustainability Learning Suites, made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. See 'Learn more about this resource' for Learning Objectives and Activities.