Science Literacy

There’s some recently published research on climate change¹ that you can easily incorporate into your next lesson on metric conversions and unit analysis. The article gives a report on ocean heat content (OHC) measurements.

Ah, sweet summertime. The time when teachers are torn between relaxing and recharging, and beginning to do planning for next year in hopes of feeling more prepared for the school year.

Can Alkaline Water Change Body pH?

I am a 7th grade teacher who has been teaching a semester of physics and a semester of chemistry at the Harker School in San Jose, CA for the last twenty years. Early on in my career, I made a few observations based on the reactions of my students when I introduced the periodic table of elements to them. 

First, thanks for reading. The ongoing global human tragedy of the spread of the COVID-19 disease and the suffering caused by the infective agent- the SARS-CoV-2 virus- have ironically provided an excellent opportunity to include in our classes the ways of science and its ways of knowing, measuring, confirming, refuting, verifying, and validating.

A good deal of evidence indicates that wearing facial masks inhibits the spread of COVID-19.^1-4 The spread of the virus appears to occur via airborne transmission.

The bush fires in Australia have killed an estimated 500 billion animals and caused widespread damage. Can these fires be connected to greenhouse gas emissions and human-caused climate change? What kind of warnings have scientists issued about the possibility of such fires in relation to climate change?