NOVA Fall 1998 Teacher's Guide

This teacher's guide is designed to accompany the PBS television program "NOVA." Six science activities correspond to: (1) "Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude,, which researches and charts the shortest course to circumnavigate the globe; (2) "Chasing El Nino," which formulates a question and designs an experiment to evaluate the accuracy of weather folklore; (3) "Terror in Space," which explores the concept of center of mass and experiments with how altering the location of an object's center of mass can affect its motion; (4) "Special Effects: Titanic and Beyond," which investigates how geometry plays a role in perspective; (5) "Deadly Shadow of Vesuvius," which collects data and create maps to observe the relationship between volcanoes, earthquakes, and lithospheric plates; and (6) "Ice Mummies," which investigates the rate of microbial growth at different temperatures, and analyzes and interprets information in order to locate an archaeological site. All activities include a list of the National Science Education Standards addressed. (YDS)