Produced for the Department for Education, this resource from Sheffield Hallam University, is designed to help employers, teachers, students and anyone involved in work experience develop strategies for creating good quality placements for young people aged 14–19.

Plant gums are often used in the food industry as thickening and stabilising agents. Gums are water soluble polysaccharides, such as starch and cellulose. In this activity, students investigate what happens to the texture when different polysaccharides are mixed.

When solutions of some polysaccharides are...

This booklet, from the Microbiology Society, gives an overview of the swine flu story so far. In eight pages it covers the disease, the causal virus, how it is transmitted, who is affected and how the disease can be treated. The National Immunisation Programme, international pandemic preparedness and the...

This Catalyst article looks at some of the unusual features of water and especially the way it behaves when it is frozen. The article explains the properties of water and how it behaves at different temperatures with the aid of illustrations showing its molecular structure. Some unusual scientific ideas are also...

This animation, from the Wellcome Trust, shows how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infects white blood cells and uses its RNA to produce a strand of DNA which becomes integrated in the host cell's genome.

HIV...

The resource, from the Microbiology Society, clarifies the difference between HIV and AIDS. The booklet describes the HIV virus, how it replicates and how it causes the disease. The stages of the infection are charted and transmission of HIV is explained, together with sections covering tests, treatments and work...

A Catalyst article about hair, how it grows, how it can be sculpted into the latest fashionable shapes and can hold fast to all the colours of the rainbow. The article explores how hair grows and how its physical structure and chemical make-up are affected by hair products.

This article is from Catalyst:...

This Nuffield Working with Science unit encourages students to explore some of the problems people have with their hair, why they happen, and what can be done about them. The unit investigates how hair is kept clean and healthy, what substances are used in hairdressing...

This is the classic investigation which demonstrates the idea of radioactive decay and half-life. There are lots of variations of this, but this one looks at using dice and removing those with a number 6. You then plot the graph to work out the ‘half-life’ of the blocks. This is a good investigation to make ...

In this podcast from the Planet Earth Online collection and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), reporters find out what sexual conflict means for female guppies, how female promiscuity may be a good thing and why female mongooses all give birth at the same time.

In an extreme example of sexual...

Produced by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), these case studies describe work done by practitioners to harness technology in STEM teaching and learning.

The projects, drawn from organisations across the FE and skills sector, demonstrate a wide variety of both technology available and...

Produced by the Learning Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), this document describes the background and key learning points from the Harnessing Technology project. This resulted in a series of case studies that illustrate the use of technology to advance teaching and learning in the Post-16 sector. This document...

A Catalyst article about the composition of sea water. The article looks at how the sea became salty, how the factors such as hydrothermal systems can affect it and it investigates whether its composition has always been the same.

This article is from Catalyst: GCSE Science Review 2005, Volume 15, Issue 3....

This case study describes David Topping’s career path in environmental research, investigating how tiny atmospheric particles influence our climate and air quality. Some research can take place almost entirely in a laboratory, whilst other studies look at complicated interactions that are vast in scale or that take...

The Earth’s climate is changing. In fact, it has always been changing. What is different now is the speed of change and the main cause of change – human activities. This issue asks: What are the biggest threats to human health? Who will suffer as the climate changes? What can be done to minimise harm? And how do we...