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In this activity, students will experiment with the old but still useful technique of using sounding lines to make seafloor maps. As is done often in science and in other fields, students will work in teams. They should…
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Rocks Tell a Story: Rock Characteristics and Environmental Clues
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Identifying rocks can be difficult, even for geologists. Proper rock identification depends on the quality of the specimen and on the clarity of its significant characteristics. In this activity, students observe and…
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The Rock Cycle: Rock Formation and Change
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A single rock could provide an example of how slowly most geological changes occur on Earth. If you picked up a rock and kept it for the rest of your life, you would probably notice that it changes little, if at all.…
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Solid or Liquid? Rock Behavior Within Earth
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Greenhouses are made almost completely of glass for two reasons. First, glass allows the maximum amount of sunlight into the building. Plants need the sunlight for photosynthesis. Second, glass prevents heat produced in…
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Students, in this activity, use a globe and lamp to model Earth’s orbit. From this concrete model, they see and understand that the cause of Earth’s seasons is the tilt of its rotational axis.
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The greenhouse effect refers to the way Earth’s atmospheric gases create a barrier that allows the heat from the Sun to penetrate and be absorbed by Earth’s surface. The heat is trapped, much like in a greenhouse. The…
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Every 29.5 days, the Moon’s shape appears to change in a predictable cycle. We call the shapes phases of the Moon. This activity will show how the Moon’s orbit causes the Moon’s phases. Students use Ping-Pong or…
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It is difficult to measure objects in the solar system because it is so massive. In this activity, students use a cross-staff to measure the angular diameter of a paper plate 4 m away. From this, they learn to measure…
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Students, in this activity, measure distances by walking heel-to-toe in the unit “student minute.” This is to gain an intuitive under¬standing of light years, a unit in which time represents distance.
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Much has been written about global warming and climate change, but Dr. Claire Parkinson, a NASA climatologist, cautions about the more alarmist predictions of future crises. Global warming is a fact, but how we go about…
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Understanding the causes of Earth’s seasons is quite challenging and is often misunderstood. Earth’s seasons are caused by the combination of its orbit around the Sun and the tilt of Earth’s axis in relation to that…
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Measuring diameters of objects in the solar system is difficult due to their vast distances and huge sizes. If the distance to an object is known, we can use a method of indirect measurement in which we measure the…
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The cause for the changing appearance of the Moon—its phases—is a difficult concept for many people to learn, and this gives rise to some surprisingly stubborn preconceptions. The phases are caused by the fact that we…
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Distances to stars and galaxies are so great that communicating the measurement in kilometers is cumbersome and difficult to comprehend. So, astronomers use a larger unit of measure called the “light year.” It is the…
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