Acid Mine Drainage and Precipitates

In this video, environmental scientists measure the pH of water to detect acid mine drainage from an abandoned coal mine and then demonstrate how metals present in acid drainage fall out of solution as precipitates when a basic substance is added to the water.

Accessibility features: Caption

Classroom Tips

From managing the technology to tips for transporting video files, this resource offers practical advice and strategies for video use.

Controlling Water Run-off

This video shows how the environmentally friendly design of the Visitor Center at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest near Louisville slows down water run-off and helps to control non-point-source water pollution, conserve water, and prevent soil erosion

Accessibility features: Caption

Tunneling for Water: Geology and the Ohio River Tunnel Project

This video explains the importance of the Ohio River as a source of drinking water, its geologic origin, the rock strata exposed when Louisville Water Company dug a tunnel beside the river to access the water, and the meaning of the terms “aquifer” and “filtration."

Effective Video-Based Lessons

We offer you some hints, gathered over long experience of helping educators integrate video into their teaching, about how to make the most of VITAL video in your lessons.

Environmental Impact of Acid Mine Drainage

This video shows how acid mine drainage from an abandoned coal mine has affected Wildcat Branch in Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest. Because the creek has a very acidic pH of 2.9, most organisms cannot survive there, and Wildcat Branch is essentially dead.

Accessibility features: Caption

Reusing Wastewater

This video demonstrates how peat filtration beds at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest near Louisville, Kentucky purify and conserve wastewater and eliminate one cause of non-point-source water pollution.

Accessibility features: Caption

Tunneling for Water: Understanding the Riverbank Filtration System

This video explores the importance of groundwater, the use of wells, and the unique nature of Louisville Water Company’s riverbank filtration system.

The Geology of Coal

In this video, a geologist describes how coal, a sedimentary rock, was formed when organic materials piled up in swamps millions of years ago. Over time, heat and pressure transformed the buried materials into forms of coal that cause acid mine drainage when exposed to oxygen.

Accessibility features: Caption

Recycling and Restoration

This video explains how Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest near Louisville, Kentucky used recycled cypress from pickle vats to build its visitor center and then “paid back” nature by creating a cypress-tupelo swamp at one end of a lake on the park grounds.

Tunneling for Water: Digging the Tunnel and Prehistoric Water!

This video traces the construction of Louisville Water Company’s riverbank filtration system, including the unexpected discovery of a reservoir of prehistoric water.

Scale City: FAQs and Media List

This PDF answers questions teachers may have about Using Scale City To Teach Proportional Reasoning, including contact information. It also includes a Media List with the times of all the videos in the teaching modules that may be used to help plan a group professional development event around Using Scale City.

High-Sulfur Coal and Acidic Water

In this video, a geologist measures the pH of water after high-sulfur coal from a Kentucky coal mine has been added to it. This test demonstrates that the sulfate salts found on the coal’s surface cause the water to become much more acidic.

Accessibility features: Caption

Rain Gardens

This video shows how a rain garden at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest near Louisville, Kentucky slows down the flow of water from the forest’s parking lot and helps prevent soil erosion.

Accessibility features: Caption

Tunneling for Water: Digging the Well and Treating the Water

This video examines the purpose, anatomy, and drilling of wells and looks specifically at how water moves through the Ohio River aquifer to the well and tunnel created by Louisville Water Company and how the water is treated to ensure its safety.

Mycoremediation

This video explores the process of mycoremediation: planting fungi such as oyster mushrooms to mitigate non-point-source water pollution caused by oil, gasoline, and other toxic substances.

Accessibility features: Caption

Restoring Lower Rock Creek

This brief video describes how Lower Rock Creek’s location between two National Wild and Scenic Rivers caused Kentucky environmentalists to choose the creek as a target for acid mine drainage remediation.

Accessibility features: Caption

Tunneling for Water: Full-Length Version

This video documents a massive riverbank filtration project undertaken by Louisville Water Company, including the construction of four wells and a mile-long tunnel. It also explores related science and engineering topics including Ohio River geology, aquifers, and the function and structure of wells.

Acid Mine Drainage Remediation

In this video, an environmental technologist visits an abandoned coal mine in Kentucky to talk about how a remediation system (a series of settling ponds and treatment cells) is neutralizing the acid drainage flowing from the mine and keeping it from damaging a creek downstream.

Accessibility features: Caption

Applying the Scientific Method

This video provides a real-life example of the scientific method: testing hypotheses about which plants will grow most successfully on a green roof in Kentucky.

Accessibility features: Caption

Results of Acid Mine Drainage Remediation

In this video, a biologist visits Rock Creek in Pulaski County, Kentucky to show how acid mine drainage remediation has increased the stream’s pH from acidic levels to almost neutral. Although the ecosystem has not been completely restored, many species have returned to Rock Creek.

Accessibility features: Caption

Stream Restoration

This video explores how Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest near Louisville, Kentucky has restored a channelized or straightened stream to its original meandering path, thereby improving the stream’s water quality and creating a better habitat for wildlife.

Accessibility features: Caption

Aquatic Insects

In this brief video, a biologist talks about the macroinvertebrates (typically aquatic insects) that form the basis of food webs in healthy Kentucky streams.

Accessibility features: Caption

Detached Wetlands

This video depicts a detached wetland, a small pool that forms beside a shallow meandering stream when it overflows its banks. These wetlands are important breeding grounds for the invertebrates that live in and beside streams

Accessibility features: Caption

Acid Mine Drainage: General Level Background Essays

These two background essays provide general information about acid mine drainage (AMD) for grades 6-12. The first explores how AMD is formed and its environmental impact, and the second focuses on the chemical processes involved in AMD. They can be shared with students or used as a reference by teachers.

Bernheim Forest: Background Essays

These two essays provide background information for grades 4-12 about water conservation and preservation at Bernheim Forest. The first essay describes the water-friendly features of the Bernheim Visitor Center, and the second describes two restoration projects undertaken at the forest.

About the Seasons

Children learn how seasonal weather changes affect everything, from the behavior of animals to the way we dress and play.

Acid Mine Drainage: Advanced Level Background Essay

This background essay for high school chemistry explores the chemical processes that underlie the problem of acid mine drainage and includes detailed equations representing these processes. It can be shared with students or used as a reference by teachers.

Bernheim Forest Discussion Questions

This PDF combines all discussion questions from the eight “Bernheim Forest” videos into a single document for teachers to download and print.

Building Video Literacy: Sound

This activity, created by EDC's Center for Children and Technology, explores how sound is used to create meaning.

Accessibility features: Transcript

10ths and Decimals

In this video segment from Cyberchase, the CyberSquad replaces a piece of track to get the Madre Bonita Express to the Mother's Day harvest.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Acid Mine Drainage Discussion Questions

This PDF combines all discussion questions from the eight “Acid Mine Videos” pages into a single convenient document that teachers can easily download and print. The discussion questions are divided into three levels: General (6-12), Intermediate (9-12), and Advanced (High School Chemistry).

Bernheim Forest Graphic Handouts

This set of five graphic handouts illustrate concepts from the eight “Bernheim Forest” videos including the design of the green roof, the cistern, and the peat filtration system as well as mycoremediation to offset oil and gasoline pollution and restoring a creek to its original meander.

Building Video Literacy: Movement

Explore the different ways movement can occur within a shot in this activity developed by EDC's Center for Children and Technology.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Acid Mine Drainage Quantitative Questions, Advanced Level

This handout for high school chemistry students is divided into general, intermediate, and advanced problems that require students to balance chemical equations, write equilibrium expressions, and answer other quantitative questions related to acid mine drainage.

Bernheim Forest Glossary

This glossary provides definitions for scientific and technical terms used in the eight “Bernheim Forest” videos.

Building Video Literacy: Response

In this activity developed by EDC's Center for Children and Technology, explore how each shot of a video can evoke a different response in the viewer.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Acid Mine Drainage Glossary

This glossary provides definitions for scientific and technical terms used in the eight “Acid Mine Drainage” videos.

Building Video Literacy: Purpose

This activity developed by EDC's Center for Children and Technology explores what a shot is designed to accomplish to create the overall meaning of a film.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Acid Mine Drainage Lesson Plans, Grades 6-9

These two physical science/chemistry lesson plans for grades 6-9 are both lab activities. One involves using acid/base indicators to test the acidity or alkalinity of common household chemicals, and the other involves testing how different factors affect the solubility of substances in water.

Acid Mine Drainage Graphic Handouts

This set of four graphic handouts illustrate important concepts from the eight “Acid Mine Drainage” videos: the pH of water, what the term “logarithmic scale” means relative to pH, how raising pH causes metal ions to fall out of solution, and an acid mine drainage remediation system.

1964 Alaska Earthquake

This video adapted from the Valdez Museum & Historical Archive, explores what happened during the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 through original footage, first-person accounts, and animations illustrating plate tectonics.

Accessibility features: Caption

The 2008 Wall Street Bailout

This video segment adapted from FRONTLINE: "Money, Power and Wall Street" traces the unprecedented decisions made by the U.S. government to intervene in the financial crisis of 2008.

Accessibility features: Caption

20-Year Map of Global Rainfall

This visualization from NASA shows global rainfall patterns over a 22-year span. It incorporates data from a combination of remote-sensing and ground-based sources.

70% Female

This Wide Angle video features the women of Rwanda who have emerged as outspoken leaders and the great strides they have made toward rights and equality.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Firefighter Training

In this video segment from Cyberchase, Harry decides to train as a firefighter and uses line graphs to chart his physical fitness progress.  

Accessibility features: Transcript

Ken

This video segment from Wide Angle features Ken, a third grade student in Japan.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday and A Song Born in Protest

Learn about teacher and author, Abel Meeropol who penned the haunting song of protest, Strange Fruit, in this segment from Independent Lens.

Accessibility features: Transcript

Abolitionist Leader William Lloyd Garrison

This video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists” profiles William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The Liberator and a leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, whose position on the slavery question generated strong and often violent resistance to the abolitionist cause.

Accessibility features: Caption

About Inspiring Middle School Literacy

This professional development video from WGBH shows how teachers work with their students, using the self-paced lessons from the Inspiring Middle School Literacy collection, to improve content knowledge and literacy skills.

Accessibility features: Caption