This Association for Science Education (ASE) publication about the industrial use of micro-organisms was developed in association with Nipa Laboratories Ltd. At the time, the company was recognised throughout the world as a specialist in the production of microbiocides...

A Year Ten module from the Salters’ double award GCSE science course. This module deals with interactions between species in ecosystems. Students are shown how stable conditions lead to a natural balance in populations and how human activities can disturb this balance....

The materials provide teachers with examples of different enquiry types, e.g. classifying and identifying, developing systems, and pattern seeking.  The booklet provides an overview of the enquiries and the particular approaches used. Scientists use many different ways to collect evidence, but a survey undertaken...

Those two simple, inexpensive, practical activities, from the Association for Science Education (ASE) explore cultivating glowing bacteria and the phenomenon of one species turning a bright purple.

The glow is caused by luminous bacteria commonly found on rotting seafood. Ghostly glowing fish like this...

With this resource, students develop observation skills by investigating the phenomenon of ‘mate-guarding’ in brine shrimp. Following a teacher-led discussion, students generate hypotheses. For example, one of the hypotheses may be that larger females pair with larger males.

These may be tested...

Produced for Future Morph, these resources consist of a short video and an accompanying classroom activity. In the video, a First Diploma in Animal Care student describes her work on the course. She illustrates how the course gives experience relevent to working in a range of environments including farming, zoos...

Chameleon bubbles are formed when a sodium alginate solution is dropped into a calcium chloride solution.  The bubbles are filled by an acid‐base indicator solution; so, adding the beads to acids or bases leads to colour changes inside the bubbles by diffusion and pH change. Students can learn about acids, bases,...

From Solar Spark, this activity allows students to see how chlorophyll can be energised and how this causes it to fluoresce. Chlorophyll in plant leaves absorb red light and pass the energy on to other parts of the plant, hence leaves look green. But if there is nowhere for the energy to go, it gets released as...

In this activity, students plan an investigation to compare two clinical thermometers or two blood pressure devises.   They will need to investigate:

• the key features needed by a clinical thermometer or blood pressure monitor. The generic features required by physiological measuring devices are...

A Year 11 module from the Salters Key Stage Four double award science course. This module introduces ideas about how living organisms control their internal environment and respond to changes in their external environment. Students are reminded that few living things...

The enzyme lactase is widely used in the dairy industry to convert the naturally occurring disaccharide sugar lactose into glucose and galactose. In this practical students investigate the treatment of milk with lactase. Following treatment they test the glucose content of the converted milk, and compare products...

As the number of cells in a microbial culture increases, turbidity increases. In this experiment students calculate doubling time and growth rate constant using absorbance as the measure of growth. Turbidity is caused by suspended cells in the growth medium scattering light, and may be measured using a colorimeter...

This experiment is a continuation of Determining Doubling Time. Students create a standard curve of absorbance against yeast concentration, and use this to determine the concentration of yeast produced over time.

The standard curve (dry mass, grams per litre) is generated from known concentrations of dried...

A Year 11 module from the Salters’ Key Stage Four double award science course. The module begins by considering variation within humans and in other species and how this could arise. The gene theory of inheritance is then studied, and finally the structure and function...

This range of practical activities and resources provided by ASE is aimed to teach about plants and flowers in schools.Growing fast plants can provide rewarding results in a short time span and the ideas encourage all students to be involved with the activities....