Masks and vaccinations are recommended. Plan your visit
The Exploratorium Teacher Institute Presented a NGSS STEM Conference
Making Science Count: Integrating Math into an NGSS Classroom
Saturday, January 28, 2017 • 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Exploratorium, Pier 15
Conference Workshop Sessions
All participants attended the plenary session plus one of three of the following hands-on workshops.
Using Mathematical Ideas to Make Sense of the World Around Us
Keynote Speaker: Paul Dancstep, Exploratorium Exhibit Developer
Video of this talk is now available here.
Earth, Sun, and Moon By the Numbers
Lori Lambertson
Explore our nearest astronomical neighbor, the moon, and our nearest star, the sun, through a variety of integrated math and science activities. We’ll explore the size and scale of the earth, sun, and moon. We’ll also discover the earth’s relationship to the moon and sun as a means for measuring time and observing cycles, moon phases, and eclipses.
How Many HeLa?
Hilleary Osheroff
Over sixty years ago, the first human cells to grow well in a laboratory were isolated from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta’s cells (HeLa cells) still live and grow in thousands of labs across the world and were a transformational tool in the study of cell biology, cancer, and virology. In this workshop, we’ll use microscopy, biology, and math to investigate the size and scale of HeLa cells and their rate of growth and replication. We’ll also answer an important question: How many HeLa cells would it take to cover the city of San Francisco?
What's the Size of What You See? (PDF)
Why We Graph
Julie Yu
Show your students that graphing is a tool for understanding rather than the product of a list of instructions and rules. Graphs can reveal patterns that lead to deeper understanding of phenomena. We’ll acquire and represent data graphically to help us describe two systems from physical and environmental science.
Sounds Like a Good Idea
Zeke Kossover
The twelfth root of two. Just intonation. Overtones. Harmonics. Maybe you've heard that math and music are related, but you've wondered what the connection is. We'll connect the physics of sound to the physiology of the ear to the psychology of the mind with some of the underlying mathematics.
Falling for Gravity
Eric Muller
Investigate acceleration due to gravity. We’ll figure out how fast things fall by using your cell phone's video camera and a laptop computer. If you teach about motion, graphing, or want to integrate more technology into your math and science curriculum, don’t drop the ball—get in on this session!
Please make sure to bring your laptop computer and cell phone, and please have QuickTime Movie Player installed on your computer before the workshop.
Cell Size and Scale: Is Bigger Always Better?
Tammy Cook-Endres
While organisms can vary in size, cells seem to have an upper limit. Join us as we engage in a suite of activities to investigate the mathematical relationship between surface area and volume and the implications of this ratio. We’ll build models of cells and explore how size and scale of various types of cells is influenced by their ability to distribute materials.
Do Science with Your Phone
Sebastian Martin
See something you want to measure? How loud is your neighbor's TV? How much light is in your room compared to outside? Use the sensors on an Android smartphone, the free Google Science Journal app, and simple materials to take measurements of your environment, document experiments, and represent data as graphs and even as sound. Together we’ll make meaning of collected data and use narratives to make graph interpretation more fun and engaging. We’ll have some Android phones available for those who do not bring one.
Science Journal Activities
Tilt-a-Graph
Getting Started with Light
Getting Started with Science Journal
Do You Need the Square?
Bree Barnett-Dreyfuss
Students often have trouble with proportions and relationships. What goes up when another quantity goes down? How much does it go up? Experience hands-on activities that show students the difference between an inverse relationship and an inverse square relationship. Explore examples using light, gravity, and electric charge.
