Ask Slashdot: Online Science For 8th Grade Students?

Peterus7 writes "I'm a student teacher in an 8th grade science classroom, and have noticed that students are very motivated by anything online. After realizing that, I've been looking for ways to incorporate internet resources into my teaching, and trying to find cool citizen science projects, activities, and simulations that would be appropriate for a grade school science class, such as galaxyzoo and fold.it. So, I'm asking slashdot for more resources that could help bring science to their lives. Thanks!"

Youtube and Instructables

[Billy the Mountain]

I've been out of school for quite a while but have kindled an interest in physics. I find that more and more there are Youtube demonstrations and lectures that are worthwhile. Also labs and hands-on science work is invaluable so I'd check out instructables.com because this not only can provide unique science opportunities, it also helps people in gaining engineering skills. BTM

3D Printing & modelling

[vik]

Teach the kids about 3D printing (see http://reprap.org/ [reprap.org] maybe even get one of the cheap printer kits or an UP! Printer if you have budget.

These things let kids unleash a form of creativity and spatial learning that is hard to find anywhere else. No need to actually teach them how to design 3D objects - they'll be scrambling to figure it out for themselves! Keen students will print their own 3D printers. Less enthusiastic ones will download from http://thingiverse.com/ [thingiverse.com] and create "Mash up" objects.

Inevitably one of them will print a penis for shock value, but kids are like that.

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Re:Get offline and do experiments

[Angostura]

I remember our science teacher getting a very large steel drum, putting some water in it and heating, then quickly screwing on a tight-fittning cap and dousing the thing in iced water. It collapsed on itself in a satisfyingly noisy way, showing just how substantial atmospheric pressure is.

One more vote for real experiments.

Re:Get offline and do experiments

[0100010001010011]

Our teacher would always have a "demo" if everyone was in their seats on time and quiet when the bell rang.

Some of the 'epic' ones I still remember:
Coiled a gas tube through a beaker. Filled the beaker with liquid nitrogen, so then we had liquid natural gas (not sure what they run to chem labs). He lit the beaker on fire and then dumped it on the floor. It was like watching a bead of water skitter across a hot skillet, except it was on fire.

They also got 2 massive blocks of dry ice. Lit up magnesium and put it in the center. We then removed the dry ice and what was left was a solid chunk of carbon. Magnesium is so insistent on burning that it ripped the oxygen from the CO2 to sustain itself.

One day we went out to the football stands and he had a rig setup that would drop a bowling ball straight down just as another one shot off the side. Used to show shit falls just as fast even if it's moving sideways.