In this recorded professional learning session, Greta Dromgool will build your knowledge and confidence to teach the particle nature of matter – a key concept in the New Zealand science ...
Explore this interactive diagram to learn more about the global carbon cycle.
Our world is made of elements and combinations of elements called compounds. An element is a pure substance made of atoms that are all of the same type. At present, 116 elements are known, and ...
Many people have heard of Sir Isaac Newton. He is famous for developing many scientific theories in mathematics and physics. Newton described how ‘normal’ liquids or fluids behave, and he ...
Geologists often need to know the age of material that they find. They use absolute dating methods, sometimes called numerical dating, to give rocks an actual date, or date range, in number of ...
Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space. A useful way to start thinking about matter is to think about the different materials, or substances, that it can be made into. These ...
Anything that has mass is made up of matter – an all-encompassing word for atoms and molecules that make up our physical world. We describe this matter as existing in states (sometimes referred ...
On 5 October 2011, the cargo vessel Rena ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef. The ship was carrying 1700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and about 200 tonnes of diesel in its tanks. Over 360 tonnes of ...
Although elements such as gold, silver, tin, copper, lead and mercury have been known since earliest times, the first scientific discovery of an element occurred around 1669. Hennig Brand, a ...
As our knowledge of the chemistry of living systems (biochemistry) increases, we learn more about essential elements. Mammals like ourselves are thought to use only 25 of the 116 known elements ...
This is both a simple and complex question. Energy is in everything – it is often described as ‘the ability to do work’. Almost all food energy comes originally from sunlight. The chemical ...
If you poured some water down a slope, it would flow freely and quickly, but what about if you repeated the process with honey? Can you imagine how honey would flow down a slope? Sticky oozy ...
The human digestive system consists of a long muscular tube and several accessory organs such as the salivary glandspancreas and gall bladder. It is responsible for food ingestion and digestion ...
Elements are formed deep within the cores of certain types of star. Find out more in this interactive.
Digestion of food involves both physical and chemical processes. Through digestion, large food particles are converted into smaller components that can be readily absorbed into the bloodstream ...
The carbon cycle can seem like a complex process because there are many interacting parts. Carbon is found in both organic (living) and inorganic (non-living) forms. Before we discuss the cycle ...
Since the earliest times, humankind has had a close association with clay. From use as a building material, in pottery, for treating human digestive ailments to a multitude of industrial uses ...
A mineral is an element or chemical compound that is normally crystalline and that has been formed as a result of geological processes. Examples include quartz, feldspar minerals, calcite, sulfur ...
The digestive system plays a critical role in breaking down large food molecules into smaller readily absorbable units. This animated video details how food is processed as it moves through the ...
Digestion of food involves chemical reactions that break up large food molecules into their ‘building block’ components. There are a number of factors that affect the rates of these reactions ...
Use this timeline to explore how humans have relied on fossil fuels in the past and how we are looking for, and using, new energy sources. 200,000 BC – Fire used Records of the first controlled ...
A chemical reaction involves a chemical change, which happens when two or more particles (which can be molecules, atoms or ions) interact. For example, when iron and oxygen react, they change to ...
Energy comes from many sources, and to describe these sources we use two terms: renewable and non-renewable. Non-renewable energy resources cannot be replaced – once they are used up, they will ...
The periodic table of elements puts all the known elements into groups with similar properties. This makes it an important tool for chemists, nanotechnologists and other scientists. If you get to ...
