When trying to describe the nature of science, it can be useful to think of science as a culture in just the same way that we think of the cultural worlds of art and music. We need to understand ...
The nature of science is the overarching and unifying strand in the New Zealand science curriculum document. Our nature of science articles on the Science Learning Hub unpacks this strand and ...
Water is the only common substance that is naturally found as a solid, liquid or gas. Solids, liquids and gases are known as states of matter. Before we look at why things are called solids ...
In this interactive, you can label parts of the human heart. Drag and drop the text labels onto the boxes next to the diagram. Selecting or hovering over a box will highlight each area in the ...
Water can exist as a solid (ice), liquid (water) or gas (vapour or gas). Adding heat can cause ice (a solid) to melt to form water (a liquid). Removing heat causes water (a liquid) to freeze to ...
Observation is something we often do instinctively. Observation helps us decide whether it’s safe to cross the road and helps to determine if cupcakes are ready to come out of the oven ...
Although earthworms are classified as animals, their bodies are quite different to animals that live above the ground. This video highlights some of the interesting physical characteristics ...
If you poured some water down a slope, it would flow freely and quickly, but what about if you repeated the process with honey? Can you imagine how honey would flow down a slope? Sticky oozy ...
The universe is full of amazing things, but we need help to see most of them. There are many types of light that our eyes cannot see, so we use instruments, such as telescopes, that can detect ...
People have ideas about science based on personal experiences, previous education, popular media and peer culture. Many of these ideas are commonly held misconceptions or myths about the nature ...
In this activity, students determine the contents of a ‘mystery’ box by making observations but without opening it, and parallels are drawn between this activity and aspects of the nature of ...
Sometimes we assume that students will learn about the nature of science just by doing scientific investigations. This is no more valid than assuming a student will learn about photosynthesis by ...
Why teach the nature of science? The short answer is that the curriculum requires it and research supports it. These are compelling reasons. The curriculum requires it Accurately conveying the ...
Sea stars have many weird and wonderful adaptations - including some unusual internal systems. Click on any of the labels in this interactive to view short video clips or images to learn more.
Distances in space are really, really big. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is heading out of our Solar System at 62,000 km per hour, but even at that speed, it would take it 77,000 years to reach the ...
The traditional concept of kaitiakitanga is part of a complex, social, cultural, economic and spiritual system that has been established through long association of iwi and hapū with land and ...
In this activity, students build their own food web using images of organisms from the marine ecosystem. This activity can be done indoors on paper or outdoors on a tarmac surface using chalk. By ...
Concept cartoons are a visual representation of science ideas. The simple cartoon style drawings put forward a range of viewpoints about science ideas in situations that are designed to motivate ...
Sea stars have many weird and wonderful adaptations including both sexual and asexual reproduction. Click on any of the labels in this interactive to view short video clips or images to learn ...
An interactive showing how the process of science works. You will need the Adobe Flash Player to view this.
This animated video shows the movement of the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s crust. Starting 600 million years ago, watch continents form and break apart as the plates move. Pangaea the ...
Professor Denis Sullivan studies white dwarfs – small and dense stars that are cooling down after being red giants. Our Sun, and most other stars, will eventually become a white dwarf. The life ...
In this activity, students assemble a tangram as a square and then reassemble the tangram incorporating an additional piece they are given. Parallels are drawn to particular aspects of the nature ...
We happily live in the Earth’s gaseous lower atmosphere composed of a mixture of gases – primarily nitrogen and oxygen. However, if we move upwards from the Earth’s surface, the environment ...
