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Courses for Grades 7-9

Don't learn for the tests, run tests to learn!

Close up of students and test tubes

The Five Short Courses

The Chemistry of Fire and Gas

The Chemistry of Atoms 

Elements and Reactivity

The Chemistry of Air 

The Formula of Chemistry 

The Story of Chemistry
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Course Description

In 1869, Siberian scientist, Demitri Mendeleev, assembled and organized all detectable matter in the universe into the Periodic Table of the Elements. How did he do this? What did he know? 

 

These are the questions that drive the laboratory explorations in this series. Students follow the 200 hundred year journey of discovery, beginning in the 1600's when scientists launched a systemic, methodical investigation into the age-old question ‘what is fire?’. 

 

From here students steer directly into the chemical and physical properties of atoms and begin to chart a course mapping out the patterns under which atoms combine. 

 

Surprising groupings of elements emerge, leading to a suspicion that there is a grand organization scheme underpinning all of the matter in the universe. The search is on for this arrangement!

The Story of Physics
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Course Description

Physicists, in their quest to understand the universe, try to find the simplest of explanations to explain the things we observe.

 

The problem is that what we observe, oftentimes, does not square with intuition! This places the physicists in a weird spot, where they must abandon intuition for the sake of truth! The only recourse is to run labs, collect data, and build a picture of that data that makes sense. The successful physicist does not mold reality to their intuition but allows their intuition to follow reality!

 

So let’s run some labs! Students in The Story of Physics follow the evolution of physics from Galileo to Einstein. Every step along the way stretches intuition.

 

Starting with Galileo and Newton, who both simply took a fresh look at how things move about our universe, from falling apples to orbiting moons, students build up a solid foundation in the laws of motion. Students then encounter a series of experiments on heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism, which seem to contradict the brilliant ideas of Newton. Amidst these investigations, an entire new physics is required to explain light and the nature of every atom in the universe. Here again, the experiments will lead the way. The student just has to create meaning around their lab results and findings!

close up of two students doing an experiment

The Five Short Courses

The Acceleration of Gravity

The Moon is Falling

The Triumph of Classical Physics

The Color of Light

The Hydrogen Atom

two students doing a lab together

The Five Short Courses

Buoyant Continents

Plate Tectonics

Darwin

Genetics and Evolution

The Origin of Life

Course Description

There was revolution in science in the 1950’s and 1960’s, which does not seem to have the notoriety like the other major periods of rapid advancements in science — the rise of chemistry and algebra during the Golden Age of Islam, the rise of experiment/emperical based science during the European Englightenment, the mapping of the cosmos in the late 1600’s led by Galileo and Newton, and the quantum revolution of the early 20th century. 

 

But it was every bit as magnificent, if not more, given the broad, sweeping array of phenomena explained under one simple idea - plate tectonic theory. 

 

Why did the big ideas in geology take so much longer than those in chemistry, physica, and even biology to coalesce? What were the data and the experiments, which ultimately revealed the workings of our dynamic earth and a beautiful explanation for the look and feature of the entire surface of the earth. 

 

After walking this path, we go back and walk the parallel path of explaining the striking similarity, yet paradoxically, the bewildering diversity of life on earth. There has to be one unifying theory here, too. Indeed, we follow in the footsteps of some of the most iconic scientists and philosophers in history to forge our own theory explaining life on earth.

COMING SOON

Grade 10-12 Courses

The Story of Chemistry

Unit 1/ Thermochemistry:

Following the historical development of thermodynamics in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, students uncover the one grand principle governing when all of chemistry happens.

Unit 2/ Physical Chemistry

Students probe the interesting and surprising properties of solutions and discover there are two distinct types of chemical bonds, bringing them to the turn of the 20th century.

Unit 3/ The Chemical Bond

Through experiment, students uncover details of the chemical bond, revealing wonderful explanations of a broad variety of chemical phenomena.

The Story of Physics

Unit 1/ Mechanics and Motion

Starting with Galileo’s experiments, students conclude with Newton's grand framework describing everything from a falling apple to the orbits of the planets.

Unit 2/ Optics and Waves

Through a series of experiments on light, students probe the nature of waves and eventually derive the wave equation.

Unit 3/ Electromagnetism

Following a 50-year explosion of scientific achievement in the mid 1800’s, students unite the theories of magnetism and electricity.

The Story of Biology

Unit 1/ Biochemistry

Students explore the properties and structures of carbon-based molecules such as carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids and learn the chemical mechanisms governing biology.

Unit 2/ Cell Biology

As the basic building block of life, students employ ingenious laboratory methods to make sense of cells and see how they work.

Unit 3/ Genetics

Following the footsteps of Gregor Mendel and Thomas Morgan in classic genetics, students foray into modern molecular genetics to explain both the unity and the diversity of life on earth.   

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