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“Perhaps the most fundamental question of biology is why life exists on Earth at all. How—and more importantly why—did it emerge, and how has it managed to persist for almost four billion years?”—D. Eric Smith.
Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
A beautifully illustrated interactive introduction to complexity science—a whole new way of understanding our world. Each characteristic of complexity science is presented in an engaging and
non-technical way.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/complexity-science/id452039428
Watching/listening
Intro video from exhibit.
Video clip from PBS NOVA on Emergence with John Holland: No leader controls the seemingly coordinated movement of a school of fish or a flock of birds. Instead, it emerges naturally as each individual follows a few simple rules, such as go in the same direction as the other guy, don’t get too close, and flee any predators. This phenomenon, known as emergence, may someday help experts explain the origin of consciousness and even life itself.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/emergence.html
Classroom activities
NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment. It is used by tens of thousands of students, teachers and researchers worldwide. It also powers HubNet participatory simulations. You can download it free of charge.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo
Interacting
Website link: ICAM (Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter) is developing a distributed global science outreach and educational network to promote novel educational initiatives that take full advantage of the internet to help learners of all ages develop an informed emergent perspective on our emergent universe.
http://www.emergentuniverse.org/#/home
“What we learn from the periodic table is that life is always conducting chemical experiments, trying to find the small advantage. It doesn’t matter how difficult it is to find the element you need—life will make the effort to incorporate it.”—Harold Morowitz
Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table
Watching/listening
A group of chemists from the University of Nottingham has created a modern version of the Periodic Table of the Elements based on a short video about each one.
http://www.periodicvideos.com
On YouTube you can find numerous versions of Tom Lehrer’s famous song “The Elements”.
Classroom activities: Collecting the Elements. Scientist Harold Morowitz had a good time with his children when they were young collecting examples of the elements either from nature or common household items and placing them on a Periodic Table of the Elements to see how many they could find. This type of treasure hunt could also make a fun classroom activity.
Interacting.
There are numerous versions of the Periodic Table of the Elements online. Here are a few that are our favorites:
Here is a website for an interactive periodic table created by Theodore Gray:
http://periodictable.com
Here’s one created by LANL:
http://periodic.lanl.gov/index.shtml
Here’s one from the Royal Chemistry Society:
http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/visualelements/pages/pertable_fla.htm
Here’s the University of Minnesota’s Biochemical Periodic Table of the Elements:
http://umbbd.msi.umn.edu/periodic
“We know that our planet started as a hot, airless, molten ball in space. The question is, How did we get from that to a planet teeming with life?”—Jim Trefil
Reading
http://en.wikipedia.rg/wiki/History_of_the_Earth
Robert Hazen’s theory of mineral evolution was a big influence on the design of the exhibit timeline:
https://hazen.ciw.edu/research/mineral_evolution
Watching/listening
TED Talk: David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_christian_big_history.html
Classroom activities
Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Life emerged sometime before 3.5 billion years ago. Here is a classroom activity designed to provide students with a sense of geologic time using a roll of toilet paper and post-it notes.
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/toiletpaper/history.html
Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_three_of_life
Watching/listening
Biology class is all about putting living things into categories, based on their differences. And creatures are different because they have different genes. But life wasn’t always like that. In the first part of this segment of NPR’s Radiolab series, Steve Strogatz, an applied mathematician at Cornell, tells about a radical theory that says that way back at the beginning of life, over 3 billion years ago, life was a big commune of gene swapping. Nigel Goldenfeld, one of the scientists who came up with this theory, says that the idea of different species, and consequently Darwinian evolution, simply didn’t apply for the first billion years of life on Earth.
http://www.radiolab.org/2008/apr/07/genes-on-the-move
Classroom activities
Using Pipe Cleaners to Bring the Tree of Life to Life
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/UToL/halverson_nabt10.pdf
Interacting
Website: The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists and nature enthusiasts from around the world. On more than 10,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history (phylogeny):
http://tolweb.org/tree
Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-urey_experiment
Interacting
Website: A virtual multimedia exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science and is based on the research of Jack Szostak and his laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Current Science and Technology team at the Museum of Science.
http://exploringorigins.org/
Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophiles
Watching/listening
NOVA: Deep in the heart of the Guadalupe Mountains in southern New Mexico, rock-eating microbes are at work. But their appetites are dainty compared to their voracious hunger millions of years ago, when they carved some of the most impressive caves in the world. "Mysterious Life of Caves" reports on a revolutionary theory of cave formation that has startling implications for the development of life on Earth and on other planets.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/caves/about.html
Classroom activities
Winogradsky Column: Many people do not know what microbes are or that they are alive. They do not realize which conditions are necessary, and not necessary, to sustain life. Building a Winogradsky column is a good hands-on classroom activity to correct misconceptions and involve students in microbiology. Description and instructions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winogradsky_column
http://quest.nasa.gov/projects/astrobiology/fieldwork/lessons/Winogradsky_5_8.pdf
Interacting
Website: Diana Northup from the University of New Mexico, Penelope Boston from New Mexico Tech, Mike Spilde, from the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico and the other members of the SLIME (Subsurface Life In Mineral Environments) Team are investigating how microbes help form the colorful ferromanganese deposits that coat the walls of Lechuguilla and Spider Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park; how these deposits compare to surface desert/rock varnish coatings; how microbes participate in the precipitation of calcium carbonate formations called pool fingers; and the microbial diversity located in the hydrogen sulfide cave:
http://www.caveslime.org/
Watching/listening
TED Talk: Penelope Boston says there might be life on Mars:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/penelope_boston.html
Classroom activities
Interacting
Discovery News website: Earth was hardly a hospitable place when life began billions of years ago. Yet despite scorching temperatures and noxious gasses, life on the planet managed to take hold. Read through our coverage of the latest research on Earth's earliest life.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/wide-angle-life-origins.html