Minerals and Gems Minerals are solid, inorganic (not living) substances that are found in and on earth. Most are chemical compounds, which means they are made up of two or more elements. For example, the mineral sapphire is made up of aluminum and oxygen. A few minerals, such as gold, silver and copper, are made […]

It’s hard to imagine that the Sun has not always been the way it is today. Yet there was time, in the distant past, when the Sun did not exist. More than 5 billion years ago, there was no Sun, no Earth, no solar system at all. There was, instead, just a huge, thin cloud […]

Story Telling What is story telling? As its core, story telling is the art of using language, voalization, and/or physical movement and gesture to reveal the element and images osf a story to a specific, live audience. A centeral, unique aspect of story telling is its reliance on the audience to develop specific visual imagery […]

Moon THE MOON 1. Our Spaceflight Begins ——————————————————————————– Imagine it’s the year 2030. From a spaceport near your home town, we’ve flown in a rocket-powered space plane hundreds of miles above the Earth. Now, inside an orbiting space station, we’re waiting for the most exciting part of our journey to begin – a space flight […]

Question: Amy and Judy sold 12 show tickets altogether. Amy sold 2 more tickets than Judy. How many tickets did each girl sell? Strategy: 1) UNDERSTAND: What do you need to find? You need to know that 12 tickets were sold in all. You also need to know that Amy sold 2 more tickets than […]

division Question: Sam put 18 pencils in 3 equal groups. How many pencils are in each group? Strategy: 1) UNDERSTAND: What do you need to know? You need to know that there are 18 pencils and they are divided into 3 equal groups 2) PLAN: How can you solve the problem? You can write a […]

Barbie Dolls Barbie dolls have probably been on Christmas wish lists for several generations of girls. In fact Barbie has become a household name for many years. Who created the first concept of the Barbie doll? The story started with the birth of Ruth Mosko in Denver Colarado in 1916. Ruth married Elliot Handler in […]

Nasa’s Chandra x-ray observatory Nasa’s Chandra x-ray observatory has 100 times the resolving power of previous X-ray scopes and will be able to view the fine details of exploding stars and clusters of hot gas. It’s improved resolution is possible in part because of its unusually high elliptical orbit which will take it a third […]

CHRISTMAS TREES The tradition of the Christmas tree dates back to the middle ages and caught on in the United States in the 1800′s. Today, approximately 15,000 US growers tend one million acres of Christmas tree farmland. The price for trees averages $5.65 per foot. Among some of top selling trees in the US are: […]

We in America use the Fahrenheit scale when talking about temperature. But in other countries around the world, they use Celsius. So, if you want to know how cold or hot it is elsewhere, you may have to resort to a little bit of mathematics. To convert Fahrenheit degrees into Celsius, subtract 32, multiply by […]

Everybody loves teddy bears. But do you know how it actually got its name? The original stuffed animal was created after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear cub that he encounted during a hunting trip in 1902. The cub was tied up and this bothered the President greatly because he said “the […]

A Russian immigrant to America by the name of Vladimir Zworykin is credited with the invention of TV. He moved to the US in 1919 and got a job at Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh. He first invented the iconoscope (an electronic camera) and a kinescope (picture tube). In 1923, he unveiled the television, which […]