Week of July 13-17 Learning Materials

Competition between African Wild Dogs and Lions
Learn about the losses an African Wild Dog pack suffers from competition with lions and how they strike back in this video from NATURE: Dogs in the Land of Lions. Support materials are available, including discussion questions and teaching tips.

Episode extras for NATURE: Dogs in the Land of Lions
Filmed over two years by cinematographer Kim Wolhuter (Nature: The Cheetah Children), NATURE takes viewers into the heart of an African wild dog family. Witness the loyalty and selflessness that sets wild dogs apart from other large, social carnivores in this deeply intimate portrayal of motherhood.

NOVA: Making North America
How did the North American continent form and take the shape it is today? How did life evolve here? And how has Earth’s spectacular landscape shaped human lives and destinies? To answer these fundamental questions, NOVA’s 3-part Making North America series takes viewers on an epic road trip through deep time to witness the clash of nature’s creative and destructive forces that have shaped our land—tectonic collisions, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, grinding ice sheets, and massive asteroid impacts.

The Serengeti Rules Collection
NATURE: The Serengeti Rules presents one of the most important, but untold, science stories of our time—a tale with profound implications for the fate of life on our planet. Beginning in the 1960s, a small band of young scientists headed out into the wilderness, driven by an insatiable curiosity about how nature works. Immersed in some of the most remote and spectacular places on Earth—from the majestic Serengeti to the Amazon jungle; from the Arctic Ocean to Pacific tide pools—they discovered a single set of rules that govern all life.

Arctic Wolf Cubs Learn Pack Behavior
Learn about pack behavior in this video from the NATURE mini-series Spy in the Wild. Part of the episode “Bad Behavior,” this video shows how young cubs must learn the rules of their pack and submit to older group members in order to survive.

Climate Change is Disrupting Arctic Food Webs
Learn how climate change is shifting the delicate balance of Arctic food webs in this video from NATURE: “Arctic Wolf Pack.” Support materials are available, including discussion questions and teaching tips.

RARE- CREATURES OF THE PHOTO ARK Collection
This collection covers key topics related to biodiversity and animal adaptation using original photographs from National Geographic photographer, Joel Sartore, and video adapted from the WGBH series based on Sartore's work, RARE—Creatures of the Photo Ark. Sartore is on a quest to capture studio portraits of critically endangered animals. He hopes the portraits inspire people to help save these animals and their habitats before they vanish.

Video clips from the broadcast series and support materials target standards on adaptation, ecosystems, and human impacts for students in grades 6–12. Interactive resources promote science inquiry skills and open-ended exploration for elementary students.

How the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids Were Built
Explore how and why the pyramids were built in ancient Egypt and analyze the architectural breakthroughs necessary to build ever-larger pyramids and the religious purpose for building them in these two video segments from NOVA: This Old Pyramid.

Pyramid Surface Area School Yourself Geometry
Adding up the areas of all the faces, including all those triangular ones, will give you the surface area of any pyramid. Learn more with this interactive video from the School Yourself Geometry series.

Scanning the Pyramids A Peek at the New Discoveries Inside the Great Pyramid
Scientists use augmented reality technology to see what the newly discovered voids inside the Great Pyramid of Giza might look like.

Tombs and the Afterlife: Empires: Egypt’s Golden Empire
The lesson focuses on the concept of the afterlife and the importance of pleasing the gods and goddesses, the significance of tombs and tomb building, and the burial customs and traditions of the ancient Egyptians.

Egypt’s Darkest Hour Sacred Crocodile Mummies Reveal the Climate of Ancient Egypt
In her desire to find out more about the circumstances leading to a mysterious mass burial, archaeologist Salima Ikram travels to Kom Ombo temple where ancient Egyptians worshipped Sobek, a god with the head of a crocodile.

What’s in the Great Pyramid?
Cosmic particles reveal a previously hidden void within the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt.

Explore Ancient Egypt
Visit the magnificent tombs and temples of ancient Thebes? In this multi-layered, highly visual interactive, view 360° panoramas, "walkaround" photos, and other breathtaking imagery shot throughout the Giza Plateau and ancient Thebes (modern-day Luxor), often with special permission.

Cosmic-Ray Muons Reveal Hidden Void in the Great Pyramid
A void as tall as the Statue of Liberty has been detected in Khufu’s pyramid, otherwise known as the Great Pyramid, using a technique of modern particle physics. While it is presently unclear what function the large void played back in Ancient Egyptian times, experts are hoping that this gaping hole in Giza’s most imposing pyramid could help answer some persistent questions archaeologists and historians have about its construction.

The National Parks Of Texas
The National Parks in Texas -- a diverse mix of sites where visitors can climb rugged peaks, kayak beautiful waterways, discover the state’s rich history and experience an endless choice of adventures. In many ways, the story of Texas parks is the story of the state itself. These special places preserve all of our natural resources and they speak of our collective history, beginning with a reef that dates back more than 260 million years and ending with an intimate look at 20th century politics.

This is America Lesson Plan
In this lesson, students will examine the challenges these individuals faced, their contributions and the personal qualities they each possessed. Then they will consider issues and problems at a national park near them and develop an action plan to address those or other community needs.

Country Music a film by Ken Burns collection
Country Music is a 16-hour series that chronicles the history of a uniquely American art form that rose from the experiences of remarkable people in distinctive regions of the United States. Through archival footage, photographs, and intimate interviews with musicians and scholars, the series offers the opportunity to explore key events in 20th century history, including technological changes, the Depression, and tensions around race and Civil Rights, all through the eyes of people who lived through them and the music they created.

The Spy Penguin
In this video from SciTech Now, learn how filmmakers for the PBS series, NATURE, have brought robotics into their work, designing animatronic cameras and other specially-engineered creations in disguise to get up close and personal with animals in the Antarctic.

Space Chase USA
Space Chase USA explores the transformative events residents of Cocoa Beach, Florida, found themselves engaged in as the future of space exploration arrived on their sleepy shores.The full Space Chase USA documentary is broken down into 20 chronological segments.

Moon Memories
The Space Coast history is especially rich because of the collective memories of the citizens. During the hectic space race days, the engineers were fueled by passion as they worked to accomplish Kennedy’s goal. Retired NASA employees and contractors share how they didn’t work a day in their lives.

Living and Working in Space Collection
No CC
This collection includes videos and digital media that have been selected to help bring the stories of human space exploration and its early history to you.

Voyager: Humanity’s Farthest Journey
In 1977, The Voyager program sent two spacecraft to explore the solar system and travel to interstellar space. In this video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, learn how Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are now the farthest any spacecraft has traveled from the Sun, and are still making discoveries in the outer reaches of the solar system.

Poppy Northcutt, NASA Pioneer, Chasing the Moon
Learn how Poppy Northcutt overcame sexism and a “boys’ club” atmosphere to become the first female engineer in NASA’s mission control in the 1960s—a situation she describes as a “complete peculiarity” at the time—in this video adapted from Chasing the Moon: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

Ed Dwight, First Black Astronaut Trainee
Hear Ed Dwight’s firsthand account of his experience and the challenges he faced as the nation’s first black astronaut trainee in this video adapted from Chasing the Moon: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

The Road to Apollo: An Interactive Journey
Discover the breathtaking failures and successes and the stakes and costs of the American space program as you take an immersive journey through Project Apollo’s missions 1, 8, and 11 in The Road to Apollo: An Interactive Journey from American Experience.

Exploring Racial Barriers at NASA
Decades after the enrollment of NASA’s first black astronauts, people of color are still a minority in aerospace. Dr. Bernard Harris, Jr., the first African American to perform a spacewalk, discusses challenging stereotypes with a young woman who dreams of planning a mission to Mars.

NOVA Newton’s Third Law of Motion
This video from NOVA illustrates the significance of Newton's law to space-walking astronauts and the engineers who design their spacecrafts.

Earthrise
Earthrise tells the story of the image captured of the Earth from space on Apollo 8 in 1968.

Mooncraters Activity
This DragonflyTV segment demonstrates how to make models of moon craters, and how craters form.

Phases of the Moon
In this interactive resource adapted from the National Air and Space Museum, learn about the relationship between the Moon's orbit and its phases.

Explore the Moon
These interactive images from NOVAprovide panoramic views of each of the six Apollo landing sites and offer a hint of what astronauts faced on the surface of the Moon.

Observing the Moon in the Sky
Observe images of the Moon during the day and night with this slideshow. The images can stimulate students’ thinking and questions about when and how the Moon appears in the sky.

Is There Life in Space?
In this module, you will explore the question, “Is there life in space?

Historic Space Suits
Explore how space suit design has evolved over time in this interactive slideshow from NOVA scienceNOW. This interactive activity requires Adobe Flash Player.

Light Falls: Space, Time and an Obsession of Einstein
Light Falls: Space, Time, and an Obsession of Einstein is an original work that celebrates the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's discovery of the general theory of relativity.

The Structure and Scale of the Solar System
Students learn about the structure and scale of the solar system, using media from NASA, in this interactive self-paced lesson from WGBH.

Surface Features in the Solar System
Students learn about surface features in the solar system, using media from NASA, in this self-paced interactive lesson from WGBH.

Gravity: Four What?
Gravity is only one of the four fundamental forces in the universe. Find out more about all the forces that keep our universe changing. Plus, what happens to humans in space? And a sheet, a basketball, Einstein explained.

Einstein: Genius Among Geniuses
Learn why Albert Einstein tops many people's lists of the greatest-ever scientific geniuses in this essay from the NOVA Website.

Einstein: A Timeline of His Life
This illustrated timeline from NOVA outlines some of the most important events of his life.

Motion and Relativity
Learn about the principle of relativity in this video from the American Museum of Natural History.

Gravity and the Expanding Universe
In this video segment adapted from NOVA, learn about the history of our understanding of the expansion of the universe.

Black Holes
Stellar mass black holes form when a very massive star dies, and its core collapses.

Black Holes
Learn how the life cycles of low-mass and high-mass stars differ, in this video from NOVA: Black Hole Apocalypse.

Where in China is…?
Play this mapping game to test your knowledge of China. Can you find the Terracotta Army or the Great Wall of China? Players start this game with 5000 miles and lose 500 miles for every wrong answer. The challenge is to get to Shanghai before running out of miles.

Know Your Dynasties
Each dynasty has left its mark on China. Even today, the Chinese refer to historical events not by their date but by the dynasty in which they took place. That's why you need to know your dynasties! Play the quiz and match the cards to the dynasty. See how many you can get right before the time runs out.

Urbanization During the Ming Dynasty: Word Search Puzzle Activity
Review the activity on urbanization in ancient China, and then try to find the related words in this word search puzzle.

Healthy Oceans
Brought to you by the California Academy of Sciences, Flipside Science is a youth-powered series that tackles environmental topics and empowers viewers to make a difference.

Clue into Climate Change
This collection explores the causes of climate change, its impacts on freshwater and ecosystems, and strategies for curbing and adapting to climate change.

Is Your Sunscreen Hurting the Coral Reefs?
How can we protect our skin and coral reefs? Watch the latest Above the Noise episode to find out.

Human Activities that Threaten Biodiversity
Human activities and population growth threaten biodiversity in almost every corner of our planet.

The City Dark: Which Way to the Ocean?
In this lesson from POV, students will study the nesting process of the endangered loggerhead turtle species and watch a video clip that illustrates how artificial lighting along nesting beaches disorients turtle hatchlings and hinders their ability to reach the ocean successfully.

The Effect of Sea Surface Temperature on Hurricanes
This video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW highlights research that supports the idea that warmer oceans generate and sustain more intense hurricanes.

Earth System: El Nino’s Influence on Hurricane Formation
Warm water fuels the tropical storms that ultimately form hurricanes. In this video segment adapted from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, learn how El Niño events—climatic anomalies that occur periodically in the Pacific Ocean—alter the course of atmospheric circulation and lessen hurricane formation in the Atlantic Ocean.

Does Climate Change Cause Extreme Weather?
Fluctuations in weather happen all the time. But sometimes, those fluctuations can get extreme, making disasters like hurricanes and heatwaves more intense.

Amelia Earhart’s Birthplace Museum
See where Amelia grew up, read news clips about her various achievements, learn about Amelia’s childhood and more.

Amelia Earhart, Aviator, Record-breaker, and Activist
Through two primary source activities and a short video, students will learn about Earhart’s passion for flying and determination to succeed as a female aviator.

Amelia Earhart Letter Archive
Analyze and interpret the letters of Amelia Earhart to understand her role in shaping her own image, and the image of 20th-century aviation, in this video from ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.

Hot Shots and Hot Jobs: Pilots Enjoy Breathtaking View and Plentiful Job Options
The possibilities for trained pilots are varied—from piloting huge passenger jets across the ocean to guiding small aircraft for police, fire and medical operations.

Milestones of Flight: The Lindberghs
Charles Lindbergh is probably best known for making the first solo flight across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis. However, Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also reached other milestones in aviation.

Copters, Choppers and the Phrog
This episode of STEM in 30 will explore helicopters: their design, how they work, and the functions they play in our society.