It's almost Baseball Season. Spring training is in full force. This is a great opportunity to make science more relevant to your students by applying science concepts to baseball. Physics, physical science, chemistry, and biology can all be related to baseball.




The Science of Baseball is a great site from Exploratorium that has articles, animations and activities that help students learn about the science of baseball, including pitches, neurobiology of the hitter, materials and construction of bats and balls and more.

The Science of NFL Football is a free lesson resource from Lessonopoly (a great site in itself). The lessons include video clips and lesson plans that you can use, organized by science topic (trigonometry, physics, health and nutrition, and more). Most of the lessons are rated for grades 5-9, but can be easily adapted for lower or higher grades. The lessons are really good quality.

This is a great way to make your lessons relevant for your students, especially with the SuperBowl coming up this weekend.

The Physics Behind "Unstoppable" is a great piece I found on Open Culture's website. The article starts with the plot of the movie and a trailer for it and then has a video from Emory physics professor Sidney Perkowitz explaining the physics part of this. Professor Perkowitz has also authored books and articles on physics and science in movies. 


Applying science to popular culture, whether movies, music, sports, or the like is a great way to connect with your students, engage them, and show them how what they are learning is important and applies in "real life".


Open Culture is a great site with a lot of resources on education.