Innovative Uses News
Although the Drop Counter was developed to record drops during titration, attaching the Luer-lock stopcock to the outlet of a chromatography column adapts it for use as an inexpensive fraction collector for column chromatography.
Ron Bowerman knows how to motivate students—competition. In his physics class, students compete for a simulated high stakes contract with an airline. Physics and engineering skills are put to the test as students work in engineering teams that try to design the lightest and strongest wing spar for an airplane.
The FIRST LEGO® League Team from Reston, VA recently took part in the High Altitude LEGO Extravaganza (HALE) balloon launch. Their payload included a LEGO NXT Robotics System with a Vernier NXT Adapter and two Vernier sensors—a UVB Sensor and a Surface Temperature Sensor.
Continue reading about Balloon Launch Uses Vernier Technology…
Richard DeLombard of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has come up with a unique way to get students to analyze acceleration graphs from amusement park rides.
Continue reading about Studying Acceleration at Amusement Parks…
Have you ever wondered about how much outlier points influence the curve fits you do in software like Logger Pro? Or, how much you can rely on measures like the slope uncertainty or the correlation coefficient as a judge of how good a line fits your data?
Is the heat given off by 500 people enough to change the temperature inside a large auditorium? How does the temperature and salinity of a tide pool compare to that of the nearby ocean water? These were just two of the questions posed to about 250 students from 52 countries who gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, this summer for the GLOBE Learning Expedition (GLE). And of course, Vernier equipment was used to investigate the answers to those questions.
From our solar dashboard, you can see a live camera view of the roof solar panels, our weather station data, and a live display of the power production of the panels. There are also tables and graphs you can use to investigate the energy production of the panels over time. It is our hope that you will be able to use this information to facilitate the study of solar energy production with your students.
You can download the background information, complete with data and sample questions from our Solar Dashboard »
Brian Lamore, physics teacher at the Chinquapin School, Highlands, Texas, has his students build a “Beakman’s” Motor to study electromagnetic induction. This simple motor can be built in a single class period and the activity is always a favorite of his students. But nothing makes an activity more interesting than a little competition, so Brian challenges his students to build the motor that will spin the fastest.
10 year-old Ben Carter of Nashville, Tennessee, was curious about the light given off by a firefly. Ben has inherited his natural curiosity and love of science from his father, Vernier consultant David Carter. Ben borrowed his dad’s Vernier Spectrometer and used it to capture the emission spectra of the fireflies.
Ben Carter, a 12-year-old from Nashville, TN, captured a beautiful time-lapse video of a monarch caterpillar pupating into a chrysalis using Logger Pro and a ProScope HR camera.
Continue reading about Capturing Monarch Metamorphosis in Logger Pro…
Clarence Bakken, a retired physics teacher from California, explored insulating capabilities of different wall materials. Clarence used an Infrared Thermometer to study the rate at which heat is transferred through the walls in a model house.
Have you ever seen an LED-based headlamp that has selectable brightness? Sometimes the brightness change is from turning on more or fewer LEDs, but sometimes the individual LEDs seem to change brightness. How does this work? Usually when you reduce the voltage across an LED, it just goes out. We looked into this question using a Vernier Light Sensor and a LabQuest.
Peter O’Connor, a teacher from Boonsboro High School in Maryland, described a situation facing many teachers—lots of students and only a few computers.
“Having used Logger Pro for many years dating back to the ULI days, my school has been happy using it in our labs. However, as class size increased, we have had issues with maintaining a small lab group size for each lab. This is a large issue when it comes to doing Vernier labs with computers.”
Vernier consultant, Walter Rohr, came across an article published in the February 1989 Journal of Chem Ed that described a method of resolving mixtures with overlapping spectra without determining molar absorptivities or complicated mathematics. The method developed by Blanco called Multi-Wavelength Linear Regression Analysis, or MLRA, allows the composition of a binary mixture with overlapping spectra to be resolved with only three measurements—the absorbance of a standard solution for each component, and the unknown mixture itself.
Continue reading about Spectrophotometric Analysis of the Metals in a U.S. Five-Cent Coin…
Brillion Middle School teachers Ryan Peterson and Matt Van Thiel have their 8th grade Earth Science students do a fun and engaging activity on topographic mapping. The activity is based on the Earth Science with Vernier activity “Ocean Floor Mapping.” Using plastic utility tarps, they create a simulated lake in their classroom.
Continue reading about Creating a Topographic Map with Motion Detectors…
Vernier recently attended the GLOBE annual conference in San Antonio, TX, where we sponsored a field trip to Natural Bridge Caverns, a limestone cave. Sixty teachers made their way through the wet, drippy tour of the caverns and collected relative humidity, temperature, and barometric pressure data along the way.
A customer called recently looking for ideas on aerodynamic drag experiments. This inspired us to do a little research with toy cars on the roof of a car.
Bernard Zalewski from Marianist Province USA sent us some information on how he uses our Go!Temp to do experiments on thermal conductivity. He uses several different metals.
An interesting and challenging problem for AP Chemistry students is the investigation of a mixture. We have a great chemistry experiment available in which the student analyzes a mixture of hydrochloric acid and phosphoric acid. This lab presents the student with the task of conducting a seemingly routine acid-base titration.
An osmosis investigation has been developed by Mike Collins, one of our staff biology teachers, that helps students understand this essential concept of cell homeostasis.
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