Debate Kit - Stem Cells
This kit, produced by the Wellcome Trust, is designed to bring How Science Works (HSW) to life and develop students’ debating and discussion skills. The aim is to encourage students to begin to consider the ethical issues that stem cell treatments raise. Role play gives students a chance to explore the different sides of…
Debate Kit - IVF
This kit, produced by the Wellcome Trust, is designed to bring How Science Works (HSW) to life and develop students’ debating and discussion skills. The aim is to encourage students to begin to consider the benefits of, and the problems that may arise from, the use of hormones to control fertility, including in vitro fertilisation…
Debate Kit - Drugs in Sport
Doping in sport usually means the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but is can also mean techniques like ‘blood-doping’. This debating kit, produced by the Wellcome Trust, explores the ethical issues around the use of drugs in sport such as possible harm to the athlete and unfairness. Role play gives students a…
Debate Kit - Are We Too Clean?
This kit, produced by the Wellcome Trust, is designed to bring How Science Works (HSW) to life and develop students’ debating and discussion skills. The aim is to encourage students to begin to consider and investigate some of the main issues surrounding the use of antimicrobial cleaners and antibiotics. Role play gives…
Adaptations to Arid Climates (Age 11-14)
In this ARKive resource, students learn about how different animals and plants are adapted to surviving in arid habitats. Working in groups, students design and carry out an experiment aimed at testing the effectiveness of different adaptations in reducing water loss. Using a worksheet as guidance, students also compare species…
Invasive Species (Age 11-14)
This resource from Arkive allows students to investigate the impacts that invasive species have on the environment, the effects that they have on native species and habitats, and the characteristics that make certain species good invaders. The activity looks at the different ways in which invasive species can potentially be controlled…
Model Cells
The cell is the smallest unit of life and for many millennia single celled organisms were the only form of life on Earth. It’s this type of life that astrobiologists are looking for elsewhere in the solar system. In this activity, wallpaper paste is used to build model cells Curriculum areas covered: • Cell biology • Cell…
Martian Death Rays
Could there be life on Mars? Perhaps so, although the high intensity of UV light means that it is unlikely to be found on the surface. The experiment demonstrates how bacteria grown on agar plates can be killed off by UV exposure. Curriculum areas covered: • Microbiology • Cell biology • Aseptic technique The…
What's Your Limit?
Conditions on other planets are unlikely to be within the same ranges as that experienced by Earth. However, a degree of variance from ‘ideal’ ranges may be tolerable for a small number of organisms known as extremophiles. This investigation looks at the effects of subjecting a living organism (yeast) to some extreme…
Is There Life In There?
All life forms on Earth are based on organic biochemistry. This activity requires students to analyse an unknown soil sample (just recovered from a space mission to another planet!) and look for signs of possible indicators for life. Curriculum areas covered: • Cell biology • Food tests, including starch, sugar, protein…
Turtle Life Cycle (Age 7-11)
This resource produced by ARKive supports the teaching of life-cycles at Key Stage Two. It looks at mammals, amphibians, reptiles and plants and finds similarities between the life cycles of animals and plants within each group, as well as some of the similarities and differences between these groups. There is a focus on the…
Seeing Inside Cells
Each individual blade of grass consists of various tissues, each made of cells in their thousands. In these cells an as yet unknown number of reactions and interactions are constantly taking place. The cells contain different parts known as organelles, which can be thought of as the cellular equivalent of the organs in animals and…
The Other Genome Project
This Catalyst article details how the genome of a plant called Arabidopsis has been unravelled so that this species can act as a model in genetic studies. Arabidopsis thaliana is a model species like the fruit fly Drosophila, yeast, and the bacterium Escherichia coli. Scientists work on these species in order to understand as…
Tuberculosis: Can the Spread of This Killer Disease be Halted?
With an increase in tuberculosis (TB) throughout the world during the 21st century, this resource looks at what scientists are doing to combat a disease that many believed was a problem of the past. The TB fact file describes the disease, its symptoms and incidence and reviews current research into its cause, Mycobacterium tuberculosis.…
H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic
This booklet, from the Society for General Microbiology, gives an overview of the swine flu story so far. In eight pages it covers the disease, the causal virus, how it is transmitted, who is affected and how the disease can be treated. The National Immunisation Programme, international pandemic preparedness and the development of…
Malaria: a Global Challenge
Malaria is one of the world's biggest killers. It infects up to 250 million and kills nearly 800,000 people per year. This resource, from the Society for General Microbiology, takes a look at the history of the disease along with its causes, diagnosis, treatment and the prevention strategies employed to tackle this global problem.…
Influenza: a Seasonal Disease
Influenza or flu is a common viral infection of the upper respiratory tract. This resource, from the Society for General Microbiology, gives an overview of the disease, how the infection is transmitted, infection, replication of the virus inside the body, the immune response and how vaccines are developed. It also explores the nature…
HIV and AIDS
The resource, from the Society for General Microbiology, clarifies the difference between HIV and AIDS. The booklet describes the HIV virus, how it replicates and how it causes the disease. The stages of the infection are charted and transmission of HIV is explained, together with sections covering tests, treatments and work on developing…
Microbes and Climate Change
This booklet, from the Society for General Microbiology, discusses the role microbes could play in tackling global climate change. The resource provides an overview of the effect of greenhouse gases on climate and the role of microbes in the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Carbon-fixation in cyanobacteria and the carbon-releasing…
Cholera: Death by Diarrhoea
Cholera is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. There have been seven worldwide disease outbreaks or pandemics since 1817, killing millions of people and infecting millions more. This resource, from the Society for General Microbiology, charts the history of the disease and investigates the causes, diagnosis,…
Investigating Poisoning
Investigating serious crimes such as murder, rape and terrorism requires forensic science experts. These people work alongside the police to find the evidence that will bring the culprit to court. In this Catalyst article, Tony Hargreaves looks at criminal poisoning and shows how forensic science is used to solve serious murder cases.
A Century of Crystallography
This poster, from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, celebrates 100 years since two scientists in the UK pioneered a technique for crystallography. Crystallography uses x-rays to create a diffraction pattern to examine the atomic structure of crystals. The poster explains Bragg’s Law, which allows the calculation…
How Does Nature Sense?
Adelheid Fischer, Biomimicry Fellow and Coordinator of InnovationSpace at Arizona State University, explains how she finds inspiration in the star-nosed mole. The mole does not use its unusual nose for smell, but as a touch sensing organ. The mole can also smell under water by sending out bubbles to catch odour molecules, and then…
How Does Nature Cool?
In this video from The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, Sherry Ritter describes how the red kangaroo stays cool in temperatures of up to 45°C. The kangaroo licks its wrists, where there are a large number of blood vessels close to the surface, and this cools through evaporation. Sherry asks whether we could learn from this cooling technique…
How Does Nature Convert Energy?
In this video Janine Benyus, co-founder of The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, describes a surprising adaptation of the pistol shrimp. The pistol shrimp has a very large claw and uses this to fire a bubble and stun its prey. The shrimp can close its claw so quickly that a vacuum is created behind the bubble. The vacuum collapses and for…
4/5- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Video
Hunting and Gathering for Ideas
This resource describes an outdoor activity which can be used to introduce students to the concept of biomimicry. Janine Benyus, founder of the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, explains how systematically observing nature and then emulating it can lead to innovative and sustainable technologies and designs. She describes how to conduct…
Dye-sensitized Solar Energy
The activity, from the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, provides an illustration of biomimetic technology. Students explore how to produce electricity by constructing a dye-sensitised solar cell at ambient temperatures, using a few simple materials. In the manufacturing of most solar cells, silica must be heated to separate the silicon…
Concrete Without Quarries
This practical activity, from the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, allows students to explore how nature creates calcium carbonate, a compound needed to manufacture cement, at ambient temperatures and using abundant, readily available raw materials. The cement used in concrete is manufactured from calcium carbonate, which is extracted from…
Colour Mixing
This video from the Royal Institution describes how colour mixing works. Colours of light cannot be mixed in physics but different cones in your eyes are sensitive to different colours. The brain interprets a mixture between the two as a colour somewhere between the two. In the case of magenta, your brain invents this colour…
Cloud Chamber
This video from the Royal Institution shows tracks within a cloud chamber. A supersaturated layer of alcohol vapour exists just above the floor of the chamber and the ionisation radiation causes vapour to condense along the path of the radiation. An Americium source is introduced into the chamber so that tracks from alpha radiation…
Endangered Species Egg Decorating (Age 7-11)
This resource, produced by ARKive, combines art and science to create models of endangered species. Children choose their favourite threatened species and study their key features. They then decorate an egg to look like their chosen endangered animal and present their completed design to the rest of the class, explaining why it is…
ARKive School Museum (Age 11-14)
Produced by ARKive, this series of activities teaches students about endangered species through the creation of an interactive museum. The ARKive School Museum presentation looks at examples of endangered species and explains the concept of an ARKive School Museum. Students then research an endangered species using the ARKive…
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