Middle School Learning Labs

Learn about forces and motion and how Newton’s Laws of Motion work in the everyday world. Start with an investigation of the laws and engage in a series of challenges to apply each law. Apply the laws to a final challenge to save the Earth from an asteroid that’s on a collision course!

Learn about the genetic code that determines our features and join us on the Dragon Reserve and Conservation Operation (DRACO) to breed your own dragon! We’ll learn the difference between a genotype and a phenotype and “breed” our dragons to create highly adapted new generations of dragon!

**Please note this is a 90-minute lab.** Students compete in a design challenge to bid on a NASA rocket contract, complete with test launch! Plan, budget, build, and test a rocket to see which team has what it takes to win the contract. Students work cooperatively in teams to use math, engineering, and interpersonal skills to compete for the grand prize. Be sure to ask us about a special discount on our Dawn of the Space Age planetarium show to complement this lab!

What do chemists have in common with detectives? They have to look for distinct patterns in order to identify what they are observing. How can we see things that are microscopic, and why is that so important for scientists? We’ll use models to assemble a variety of simple molecules and then learn what glucose is, how it’s made, and how it can be broken down to give us energy.

Earth is a complex system of different spheres: the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere. See how each sphere impacts human activity and what resources it can provide in a series of experiments to understand how all of these systems create our home.