24 experiments found
Clear filtersAnimals are grouped by what they eat: herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat other animals and omnivores eat both, and their teeth or beaks suit their food
Look at what each animal eats and at its teeth or beak, then sort the animals into herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.
Animals with a backbone (vertebrates) form five groups, told apart by their body covering, how they breathe and how their young are born
Check each animal's body covering, how it breathes and how its young are born, then sort it into fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds or mammals. Watch out for the bat, the whale and the penguin!
A balanced diet gives enough energy and protein and has every food group: cereals for energy, dal and milk for protein, vegetables and fruit for vitamins, minerals and roughage, with water
Plan a day's food from rice or roti, dal, milk or curd, vegetables and fruit. See how much energy and protein it gives against what an 11-year-old needs, and how many food groups are on the plate.
Iodine turns starch blue-black, copper sulphate with caustic soda turns protein violet, and fat leaves a see-through oily spot on paper; most foods are mostly one nutrient
Test twelve everyday foods, from rice and atta to egg white and ghee, with iodine, copper sulphate and a piece of paper, then sort them by the nutrient they are mostly made of.
Exercise makes our muscles need more oxygen and food, so we breathe faster and the heart beats faster; both slow down again as we rest
Count your heartbeats and breaths for 15 seconds while sitting still, then after walking, skipping and running, and again as you rest. See how hard your body works, and how quickly it calms down.
Living things carry out all the life processes; a thing that shows only one or two, like fire or a car, is not alive
Check things for the signs of life (moving, breathing, sensing, growing, reproducing, excreting and needing food) and sort them into living, once living and never alive.
Microorganisms are too small to see without a microscope; the main groups are bacteria, fungi, protozoa, algae and viruses, and some are useful while others cause disease
Look at prepared slides and microscope images of tiny living things, find out whether they are useful or harmful, and sort them into bacteria, fungi, protozoa, algae and viruses.
Flowering plants make flowers and seeds inside fruits; non-flowering plants never flower and make spores (ferns, mosses) or bare seeds on cones (pine, cycas)
Look for flowers and seeds on ten plants with a hand lens, then sort them into flowering and non-flowering plants. Does every plant have seeds?
Roots grow best in loose soil that holds some water and lets air in; too little or too much water slows them
Grow maize seedlings in clear pots of sandy, loamy and clay soil with different amounts of water, and measure the roots.
A seed contains a tiny plant (embryo) with a food store, protected by a seed coat; beans store food in two cotyledons, maize in its endosperm
Soak a bean seed and a maize grain, open them up, and label the seed coat, hilum, micropyle, cotyledons, plumule, radicle and endosperm.
A leaf has a stalk (petiole) and a flat blade (lamina) supported by a midrib and veins, with an edge (margin) and a tip (apex)
Examine a leaf with a magnifying glass and label its petiole, lamina, midrib, veins, margin and apex.
Leaves with a network of veins (reticulate) usually belong to plants with tap roots; leaves with parallel veins usually belong to plants with fibrous roots
Look closely at the veins in leaves from common Nepali plants, check their roots too, and sort them into reticulate and parallel venation.
Each part of a flowering plant has a job: roots take in water, the stem carries it, leaves make food, flowers make seeds, and fruits protect and spread them
Label the root, stem, leaf, flower, bud and fruit on a flowering plant, and find out the job each part does.
Seeds need water, warmth and oxygen (air) to germinate; light is not needed until the seedling grows
Set up dishes of bean seeds with and without water, warmth, air and light, and count how many germinate each day.
Body mass index compares mass with height: BMI = mass (kg) ÷ height² (m²); for adults 18.5 to under 25 is a healthy range, but children are still growing, so their BMI is checked on charts for their age and sex
Choose a mass and a height and work out the body mass index, BMI = mass ÷ height². See which adult band it falls in, and learn why doctors use age charts, not these bands, for growing children.
Energy used (kcal) ≈ MET × body mass (kg) × time (hours), where the MET says how many times harder than resting an activity is; harder play, a heavier body and longer play all use more energy
Choose a game or exercise, your body mass and how long you play, and work out how much food energy your body uses, in kilocalories and in rotis.
First aid is the help given before a doctor arrives: it keeps the person safe, stops things getting worse and gets them to proper care; some common habits, like ice on burns or sucking snake venom, harm or waste precious time
Twelve things people do for burns, cuts, nosebleeds, snake and dog bites, diarrhoea and someone who has fainted. Find out why each helps or harms, and sort the good first aid from the old habits that do damage.
Each case of a disease infects R₀ people when no one is immune; when more than 1 − 1/R₀ of people are vaccinated, each case infects fewer than one other and the disease dies out, protecting even those who cannot be vaccinated
Choose a disease, from flu to measles, and how many people in a town are vaccinated. See how many people each case infects now, how many must be vaccinated for herd immunity, and whether the disease dies out or keeps spreading.
Bacteria multiply by splitting in two; in warm food they can double every 20 minutes, so after n doublings one germ becomes 2ⁿ, which grows faster and faster
Start with one germ on a plate of food left out in the warm. Choose how often it doubles and how many hours pass, and watch one germ become thousands, then millions, which is why cooked food should not sit out for long.
The body loses water in sweat, breath and urine, so a child needs about 35 mL of water for every kg of body mass each day, more when playing hard and on hot days
Choose a body mass, the minutes of hard play and whether it is a hot day, and work out how much water a child needs in a day, in millilitres and in glasses.
Inherited traits are set by genes passed from parents to children; acquired traits are learnt or gained during life, from practice, injury or the surroundings, and are not passed on in the genes
Look at twelve traits, from eye colour and dimples to a scar, a suntan and the language you speak. Find where each comes from and whether your children could get it from you, then sort them into inherited and acquired traits.
A lack of one nutrient causes a deficiency disease: vitamin A night blindness, vitamin C scurvy, vitamin D rickets, vitamin B1 beriberi, iron anaemia and iodine goitre; foods rich in that nutrient prevent it
Twelve cards show a sign of poor diet, such as night blindness or a swollen neck, or a food that prevents one, such as carrots or iodised salt. Find out what each tells you, then sort them by the vitamin or mineral they are about.
Red cells may carry A, B and Rh antigens; a patient's blood attacks any A or B it lacks, and an Rh-negative patient reacts to Rh, so O− can give to everyone and AB+ can take from everyone
Check twelve donor and patient pairs, from O− to A+ and AB+ to O−. Find the antigens on the donor's red cells and the antibodies in the patient's blood, and sort each transfusion as safe or not safe.
Plants cannot move, so they spread their seeds away from the parent plant by wind, water, animals or bursting pods, and each seed or fruit has a shape that suits its way of travelling
Look closely at twelve seeds and fruits, from the dandelion's parachute to the coconut's husk and the burr's hooks, and sort them by how they travel: by wind, by water, by animals or by bursting pods.