Laboratories and Materials for 8th Grade Science

The 12th annual Summer Institute hosted at Oklahoma School for Science and Mathematics (OSSM) in Oklahoma City had four parts: Geosciences, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.  There was a simultaneous mathematics workshop, but they went their own way.  All of the lectures and laboratories were presented by Ph.D. instructors having extensive previous teaching and research careers.  The geosciences portion of the workshop focused primarily on petroleum geology.  The chemistry section provided some nice laboratory exercises that can be done with common household chemicals and products.  One particularly cool experiment used red cabbage juice as a pH indicator.  The Biology exercises included in-vitro fertilization using sand dollars and a blood typing lab using both the artificial blood kits and real human blood.