Why is the sky blue? Why do stars twinkle? Why did the apple fall to the ground? What happens if I hit this rock with another rock? As humans, we’re curious, and throughout history, we’ve ...
In the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus published a system for classifying living things, which has been developed into the modern classification system. People have always given names to things that ...
Our understanding of how inherited traits are passed between generations comes from principles first proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1866. Mendel worked on pea plants, but his principles apply to ...
Relative dating is used to arrange geological events, and the rocks they leave behind, in a sequence. The method of reading the order is called stratigraphy (layers of rock are called strata) ...
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 ...
Use this timeline to find out some highlights in the progression of flight in human history. 1000 BCE – First kites Kites are invented in China. 852 BCE – A king tries to fly The English King ...
Mendel is known as the father of genetics because of his ground-breaking work on inheritance in pea plants 150 years ago. Gregor Johann Mendel was a monk and teacher with interests in astronomy ...
Microscopes let us view an invisible world – the objects around us that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. This timeline provides a look at some of the key advances in microscopy. ~710 ...
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 ...
Use this interactive to work out the relative ages of some rock layers from youngest to oldest. Drag and drop the text labels onto the diagram.
The discovery that genes are made up of DNA and can be isolated, copied and manipulated has led to a new era of modern biotechnology. New Zealand has many applications for modern biotechnologies ...
Pure lime, or quicklime, is calcium oxide. Its ease of manufacture and chemical properties make it an important industrial chemical. Lime has a long history dating from the earliest of times. Its ...
This timeline looks at some of the historical aspects of rockets – taking science and technology to new heights. 1232 – Chinese fire arrows The first true rocket is invented by the Chinese. Fire ...
For a plane or bird to fly, its wings must produce enough lift to equal its weight. Most wings used in flight are a special shape – called aerofoils (or airfoils). This shape is needed to help ...
For thousands of years, people have wanted to fly. Our legends and fairy tales are full of humans and animals that can fly – effortlessly gliding through the air. In real life, of course, no one ...
A bird is designed for flight. The combination of light weight, strength and shape, as well as precision control, is largely responsible for giving birds their special ability for sustained ...
A microscope is something that uses a lens or lenses to make small objects look bigger and to show more detail. This means that a magnifying glass can count as a microscope! It also means that ...
Biotechnology has helped improve the quality of people’s lives for over 10,000 years. Today’s biotechnologies vary in application and complexity. However, they all have potential to change our ...
Early examples of biotechnology include breeding animals and crops, and using microorganisms to make cheese, yoghurt, bread, beer and wine. Biotechnology can be broadly defined as purposefully ...
Since the earliest times, humans have made observations of the night sky. These observations, particularly of the Earth, Moon, Sun and planets (visible to the naked eye), led to the development ...
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 ...
Nobel prize winner, Sir Paul Nurse, thinks there are five big ideas in biology. He suggests that cell theory is the first of these. During a 2006 tour of New Zealand, he explained why cells are ...
Dr David Krofcheck is a particle physicist who believes that the Big Bang is how matter came about. In this video, David explains how the universe as we know it came about – the Big Bang produced ...
Māori ancestors possessed a wealth of astronomical knowledge that they referred to as tātai arorangi. The knowledge was important for many aspects of daily life, from growing crops, fishing and ...
