The growth of pollen tubes is one of the most characteristic events in angiosperm reproduction. This article describes an activity for visualizing the journey and guidance of pollen tubes in the reproductive structures of a flowering plant. The activity uses a semi-in vivo system with rapid-cycling "Brassica rapa," also known as Fast Plants.…

Bioscience and premedical profession students are a major demographic served by introductory physics courses at many colleges and universities. Exposing these students to biological applications of physical principles will help them to appreciate physics as a useful tool for their future professions. Here I describe an experiment suitable for…

Field-based undergraduate geography courses provide numerous pedagogical benefits including an opportunity for students to acquire employable skills in an applied context. This article presents one unique approach to teaching geographic field methods using paleoecological research. The goals of this course are to teach students key geographic…

This article provides an interview transcript between David Kahn and Mario Montessori (1898-1982), son of Dr. Maria Montessori. Mario Montessori dedicated his life to the preservation, dissemination and application of Montessori's works. Herein Kahn asks Montessori about his time living in the hills of Kodaikanal, India. Montessori touches upon…

Finding common interests with which to engage learners from different cultural backgrounds can be a challenge in any classroom. It is particularly so in an urban, English/Spanish dual-language immersion school, which draws a socioeconomically and linguistically diverse population of students from a wide geographic area. The curriculum design in…

Western red cedar leaf affords an essential oil characterized by high thujone content. Students in an advanced organic chemistry lab course isolate a single thujone diastereoisomer from commercially available cedar leaf oil. Treatment of crude oil, containing roughly 70% thujone, predominately as [alpha]-thujone (6.5:1), with ethanolic sodium…

Water transport in tall trees is an everyday phenomenon, seldom noticed and not completely understood even by scientists. As a topic of current research in plant physiology it has several advantages for presentation within school physics lectures: it is interdisciplinary and clearly shows the connection between physics and biology; the…

Misconceptions are not simply factual errors or a lack of understanding, but rather explanations that are constructed based on past experiences (Hewson and Hewson 1988). If students' misconceptions are not directly engaged in the learning process, they may persist--even when faced with instruction to the contrary (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking…

The "Intelligences That Plants Can Pass On" is an activity that involves several of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and was designed for demonstrating the practical use of Multiple Intelligences in delivering education programs to all ages of learners. Instructions are provided for how to implement this activity, and the activity is linked to…

Virtual Forest is a web-based, open-access learning environment about forests designed for primary-school pupils between the ages of 10 and 13 years. It is pedagogically designed to develop an understanding of ecology, to enhance conceptual development and to give a holistic view of forest ecosystems. Various learning tools, such as concept maps,…

Copper fungicides and bactericides are often used in tomato cultivation and can cause toxic Cu levels in soils. In order to combat this, organic matter can be applied to induce chelation reactions and form a soluble complex by which much of the Cu can leach out of the soil profile or be taken up safely by plants. Organic acids such as citric,…

The ocean is home to some of Earth's most important producers. Single-celled organisms in the ocean are responsible for more than half of Earth's productivity, as well as most of its oxygen. Phytoplankton are single-celled, plantlike organisms. That is, they have chloroplasts and perform photosynthesis, but are not true plants, which are typically…

Charles E. Bracker was a professor of botany and plant pathology at Purdue University from 1964 to 1999. His late wife, Anri, was an orchid enthusiast who began collecting and housing orchids in the 1980s. In 2009, Bracker's 30,000 digital orchid photographs were donated to Ball State University Libraries, where both of this article's authors…

Role-play provides fifth-grade students with the opportunity to develop meaningful connections to environmental science concepts and understand how those concepts relate to their community. Role-play also builds students' communication skills and increases their understanding of the attitudes of science. By participating in role-play, teachers…

It is difficult to demonstrate the soil water retention relationship and related concepts because the specialized equipment required for performing these measurements is unavailable in most classrooms. This article outlines a low-cost, easily visualized method by which these concepts can be demonstrated in most any classroom. Columns (62.5 cm…