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Browse curated homeschool resources from the community

TED-Ed: Consciousness & Perception Lessons
TED-Ed celebrates the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Discover hundreds of animated lessons, create customized lessons, and share your big ideas.

Would You Weigh Less in an Elevator Carol Hedden
What happens when you jump in a moving elevator? Do you weigh more when you're going up and less when you're going down? Carol Hedden explores the relationship between gravity, weight, and relative motion, using a moving elevator to explain the fascinating physics.

Shashi Tharoor Why Nations Should Pursue Soft Power
India is fast becoming a superpower, says Shashi Tharoor -- not just through trade and politics, but through "soft" power, its ability to share its culture with the world through food, music, technology, Bollywood. He argues that in the long run it's not the size of the army that matters as much as a country's ability to influence the world's hearts and minds. After a long career at the UN, and a parallel life as a novelist, Shashi Tharoor became a member of India's Parliament. He spent 10 months as India's Minister for External Affairs, building connections between India and the world.

Surviving the Coldest Place on Earth Nadia Frontier
The vast, white surface of Antarctica stretches for over 3 million square kilometers. On the coast of this expanse, just a few meters beneath the ice, lies a remarkably diverse realm that is home to over 8,000 species of sea denizens who rely on an arsenal of otherworldly traits to survive. So how do these species not only live, but thrive, in such harsh conditions? Nadia Frontier investigates.

String Theory and the Hidden Structures of the Universe Clifford Johnson
What is everything made of? Thus far, we can break everything in the universe down to a few very small elementary particles. But they fit into strange patterns that are not understood. Some scientists believe that this is because we can go deeper - perhaps to simple vibrating strings! At TEDYouth 2012, Clifford Johnson describes these ideas, along with the concept of string theory.

Curiosity Discovery and Gecko Feet Robert Full
The scientific method is widely used to make many scientific discoveries, but Robert Full suggests the possibility of finding world-changing results with less formulaic approaches. In his TEDYouth Talk, Full describes the unlikely way he studied gecko’s feet and how these beneficial discoveries could eventually save lives.

The Good and the Beautiful Health and the Physical Body
The full-color Course Book guides the parent through each lesson in the Health and the Physical Body science course. Hands-on activities, vocabulary words, access to captivating videos, mini books, beautiful illustrations and images, along with engaging information is found throughout the course. Once you gather any si

How Speaking Multiple Languages Benefits the Brain Mia Nacamulli
It’s obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier — like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Mia Nacamulli details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain healthy, complex and actively engaged.

Can You Solve the Alien Probe Riddle Dan Finkel
Your team has developed a probe to study an alien monolith. It needs protective coatings — in red, purple and green — to cope with the environments it passes through. Can you figure out how to apply the colors so the probe survives the trip? Dan Finkel shows how.

Sending a Sundial to Mars Bill Nye
Bill Nye, otherwise known as The Science Guy, inherited his father's fascination with sundials. And so he campaigned to have sundials aboard the Spirit and Opportunity Mars exploration rovers. A look at how a small device reveals big implications as to our place in space.

How Life Begins in the Deep Ocean
Where do squid, jellyfish and other sea creatures begin life? The story of a sea urchin reveals a stunningly beautiful saga of fertilization, development and growth in the ocean depths.

The Microbial Jungles All Over the Place and You Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter
As we walk through our daily environments, we’re surrounded by exotic creatures that are too small to see with the naked eye. We usually imagine these microscopic organisms, or microbes, as asocial cells that float around by themselves. But, in reality, microbes gather by the millions to form vast communities. Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter describes how and why microbes create biofilms.

Protecting the Brain Against Concussion Kim Gorgens
In a lively talk, neuropsychologist Kim Gorgens makes the case for better protecting our brains against the risk of concussion -- with a compelling pitch for putting helmets on kids. (Filmed at TEDxDU.)

Nature s Fortress How Cacti Keep Water in and Predators Out Lucas C Majure
If you were a jackrabbit in the desert, you’d be glad to stumble across a cactus: the flesh of these plants is a water source for many animals. Known for their spines and succulent stems, cacti of all shapes and sizes have evolved to not just survive, but thrive, in some of the harshest desert climates on Earth. So how do they do it? Lucas C. Majure shares the prickly plant’s unique adaptations.

The High Stakes Race to Make Quantum Computers Work Chiara Decaroli
Quantum computers could eventually outstrip the computational limits of classical computers. They rely on the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles, whose quantum states are incredibly fragile and easily destroyed— which is why this technology remains largely theoretical. How would quantum computers work, and are they really possible? Chiara Decaroli investigates.

How Do Jetpacks Work and Why Don T We All Have Them Richard Browning Debbie Browning
In 1961, Yuri Gagarin piloted a spacecraft in humanity’s first manned space flight. A week later, Bell Aerosystems debuted a gas-powered rocket pack that could fly 35 meters in 13 seconds. Unfortunately, engineers knew this short flight was all the rocket pack could muster. So why was a massive spacecraft easier to send flying than a single pilot? Richard Browning investigates.

How the Stethoscope Was Invented Moments of Vision 7 Jessica Oreck
The stethoscope is the single most widely used medical instrument in the world. But where did the idea come from? In the seventh installment of our ‘Moments of Vision’ series, Jessica Oreck shares the modest origins of this incredibly useful item.
Encyclopedic Entry: Air Pollution
Air pollution consists of chemicals or particles in the air that can harm the health of humans, animals and plants. It can even damage buildings.