Objects are made of particles with mass. Understanding particles helps us to design our world.

All organisms, including humans, depend on, interact with and affect the environments in which they live and other organisms that live there.

All matter is made up of atoms. The behaviour and structural arrangement of atoms explains the properties of different materials.

Waves radiate information. Understanding waves helps us to communicate.

Materials are either made of a single chemical substance or a mixture of substances which each have distinctive properties.

Organisms are made of one or more cells, which need a supply of energy and molecules to carry out life processes.

Differences between organisms cause species to evolve by natural selection of better adapted individuals. The great diversity of organisms is the result of evolution.

"Variation,...

The Big Ideas: the future of engineering in schools report, supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, reflects the views of leading engineering education experts and key stakeholders such as employers, parents and students. It proposes that students should be explicitly taught about engineering and the...

Learning ...

This short task considers a distance time graph for a bike ride. Students must answer a series of six questions on interpreting the graph, including calculating speed.  

The resource comes with both scored and unscored student work. This is useful for peer assessment and ironing out misconceptions. A...

This article looks at...

Act 1

A video screen grab is shown of a counter showing how...

The purpose of bin packing is to pack a collection of objects into containers called bins. The bins are all the same size and the objects to be packed are different sizes. The aim is to pack the objects into the bins using the fewest possible bins. In this example students are asked to save computer files onto a CD...

In this resource students are asked to play the role of a local theatre manager, tasked with finding the best way to organise the audience to minimise the amount of space they take up. To solve the problem students must apply a series of first fit algorithms.

The resource includes a teacher presentation,...

This package of Core Maths resources explore how to solve bin packing problems using the first fit decreasing algorithm.

Bin Packing: Teacher guide
The teacher guide presentation contains an introduction to the topic through the plumber’s dilemma before working through the best possible...