rse sci exploration page

The Rutgers Science Explorer bus features interactive exhibits and laboratory exercises in the life sciences, earth science, and the physical sciences. Rutgers graduate students who have been awarded special teaching fellowships staff the bus and conduct the presentations. The Rutgers Science Explorer accommodates two Rutgers instructors, 20 students, their teacher, and up to two visitors per teaching session. In order to initiate the process for arranging a Rutgers Science Explorer visit, please view the Scheduling Details page and fill out our visit request form. The Rutgers Science Explorer staff will contact you with available dates in your area.

Science Exploration Curriculum

The Rutgers Science Explorer offers activities suitable for middle school students that encompass the areas most frequently covered in middle school curricula: life sciences, earth science, and the physical sciences. Many activities also incorporate mathematics and/or technology. The activities currently available are:

Earth & Space Science (including new Climate Change Activities)

  • Earth's Time Machine (6-8th grade)
    If no one is around to tell us what the climate was like in the past, how do we know what it was like when the dinosaurs roamed the earth? How do we know that human activities are causing the climate to change so rapidly and that it's not simply a natural cycle? In this activity, students answer these questions and more when they become paleoclimatologists, scientists who use evidence from the ocean floor to understand what our planet was like in the past.

  • Underwater Robots (6-8th grade)
    Robots can improve our lives and scientific endeavors in many ways, including collecting information from the ocean without getting seasick. Data from unmanned vehicles can help us better manage ocean resources, understand climate change, and improve navigation. In this activity, students gain a better understanding of buoyancy by become glider pilots and preparing their robots for an ocean mission.  They also examine data collected by Rutgers real fleet of underwater robots.

  • Drilling into Science: A Petroleum and Oil Exploration (6-8th grade)
    Using chemistry, math, geology, and current events, we will discover the substance that makes our cars go, lip gloss shiny and our plastics possible from finding reserves to extracting and refining it, this exploration is all about oil! After learning about the chemistry of hydrocarbons and the process of ‘cracking’ these molecules to create the various materials we refine out of crude oil, students become geologists on the hunt for oil. Using maps containing the necessary geologic features of petroleum formation, students explore their oil field in the hopes of striking oil before they go bankrupt.

  • One Fish, Two Fish - Marine Ecology (6-8th grade)
    Why are there dead fish? Students delve into an investigation of New Jersey marine ecology; understanding the animals, habitat and environmental issues of the Raritan Bay and surrounding areas. We will explore food webs, water quality and the human impact effects as students look into the causes of a hypothetical fish kill event discovering the concept of eutrophication.

Life Sciences

  • Skeleton Detectives (7-8th grade)
    Whose body? Students take on the role of forensic anthropologists in charge of discovering the identity of bones discovered at a crime scene. Using measuring skills and basic algebra, the height, sex, and ancestry of two individuals are uncovered. Students then each examine unique characteristics of skulls to determine the sex and ethnicity of their individual.

  • DNA Detectives (6-8th grade)
    Students embark on a journey through the Amazon River Basin, coming across an unfamiliar plant. Traditional resources are not helpful in identifying this mystery so they examine the DNA to discover a new way to identify unknown organisms. Drawing on the basics of the DNA molecule, students perform an ethanol extraction, become restriction endonucleases and run an electrophoresis gel to determine the identity of this unknown plant.

  • One Fish, Two Fish - Marine Ecology (6-8th grade)
    Why are there dead fish? Students delve into an investigation of New Jersey marine ecology; understanding the animals, habitat and environmental issues of the Raritan Bay and surrounding areas. We will explore food webs, water quality and the human impact effects as students look into the causes of a hypothetical fish kill event discovering the concept of eutrophication.

  • Outbreak! (6-8th grade)
    Students take on the role of a researcher at the Center for Disease Control to identify the unknown microbe that is causing a fictitious outbreak. As they create a list of potential culprits, they learn all about the many, many microbes, both good and bad that are in our lives. Using a series of simulated tests just like the professional do, students eliminate the possible causes one by one, learning about each microbe as they go. They discover the reason for the outbreak just in the nick of time!

  • Cancer Detectives (6-8th grade)
    Students take on the role of a doctor at the RSE Mobile Health Clinic. After meeting their patients, they collect and use data to diagnose patients suffering from lung related ailments. What treatment strategy is the right for their patient? After investigating how different cancer treatment methods work, the students will make an argument for why a particular treatment might help to save their patient. Offered in Collaboration with RUYES.

  • The Microbiome Inside You (6-8th grade)
    How do bacteria control our bodies? In this activity, students are challenged with determining why a doctor would recommend a fecal microbiota transplant. To understand this, they explore the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, the human microbiome, and the important role our bacterial symbionts plays in regulating our health.

Physical Science

  • Matter Matters (7th–8th grade)
    Everything is made of matter, and all matter is made of particles. This basic idea is the foundation for an exploration of all things matter! Beginning with the particles themselves, we will begin to understand how the proton, neutron and electron make up everything. Using physical representations and visible demonstrations, students can see the charged nature of these molecules, the structure of the atom and the forces at work within it, what radioactivity is and how this all relates to the periodic table.