Think-pair-share and jig-saw activity asking students to study and compare subsidence curves from different tectonic settings.
This assignment connects aspects of green chemistry and environmental stewardship with some of the skills and theory involved in natural products chemistry and separation methods.
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In this activity students synthesize ideas from lecture, reading, and viewing two PBS NOVA videos on hurricanes.
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This well-designed experiment compares CO2 impacts on salt water and fresh water. In a short demonstration, students examine how distilled water (i.e., pure water without any dissolved ions or compounds) and seawater are affected differently by increasing carbon dioxide in the air.
A 1-page in-class exercise on compatibility diagrams.
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A 1-page in-class exercise on compatibility diagrams.
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A 1-page in-class exercise on compatibility diagrams.
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Explore a NetLogo model of populations of rabbits, grass, and weeds. First, adjust the model to start with a different rabbit population size. Then adjust model variables, such as how fast the plants or weeds grow, to get more grass than weeds. Change the amount of energy the grass or weeds provide to the rabbits and the food preference. Use line graphs to monitor the effects of changes you make to the model, and determine which settings affect the proportion of grass to weeds when rabbits eat both.
In this exercise, students use whole-rock major- and trace-element compositions of volcanic rocks to explore the origins of compositional variation in igneous suites. With the help of detailed step-by-step instructions, datasets from the Yellowstone and Crater Lake calderas are downloaded from the GEOROC database, imported into Excel spreadsheets, and graphed in the form of "Harker" diagrams to learn about the different petrogeneses of these two volcanic suites.
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In this exercise, students use whole-rock major- and trace-element compositions of volcanic rocks to explore the origins of compositional variation in igneous suites. Large datasets from the Yellowstone and Crater Lake calderas are downloaded from the GEOROC database, imported into Excel spreadsheets, and graphed to learn about the different petrogeneses of these two volcanic suites.
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Microorganisms in action!
The software package known as SHAPE (Shape Software 521 Hidden Valley Road, Kingsport, TN 37663) provides an excellent method for accurately drawing crystals. The following three boxes describe the basic steps involved in using SHAPE. Refer to these instructions when completing the exercises.
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The purpose of the resource is to produce a land cover type map from the digital file of a Landsat satellite image using MultiSpec software.
The intent is to provide a map-based framework, complete with animations showing the geologic evolution of the area to be visited, so that students can then better appreciate the observations made at the various stops along the way and see how they each relate to the other and the big picture.
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Introduction: Understanding market price fluctuations is difficult for the average consumer as they are not often cognizant of what raw materials are used for various products. The goal of this lesson is to illustrate as many of the economic principles related to mineral commodities as possible and, as the lesson is ideally taught in the context of an earth or environmental science course, to couple these principles with the realities of mineral mining and subsequent processes required to produce a raw material from an ore. The lesson uses copper as an analog for such commodities. While the scope of this lesson is, then, quite unusual for high school students, these concepts are quite necessary to produce a populace who can make educated, socially-responsible, and economically-prudent decisions in both their political and personal lives.
Background: This lesson is ideal for any situation where the goal is to teach earth or environmental science students about the realities of mineral commodities, how they are extracted, and how supply and demand for them work to create that market, produce goods, and affect the environment. In the real world, most of the supply-chain for such products is hidden from the end-use consumer. This is certainly not intentional on the part of governments and corporations, necessarily, but is pretty typical due to the remote nature of most mining operations and the lack of contact that consumers have with various mid-level parts of this supply chain. Typically, the only exposure to mineral commodity prices will occur when this consumer wishes to purchase a product that contains those minerals and whose price is observed to not be consistent over time. Petroleum is a common example of this in our everyday lives, but it is no different than any other. Thus, this lesson focuses on the life cycle of copper, which is a mineral commodity that most of us think little about in our day to day lives yet is just as prevalent and important as other commodities like petroleum.
Conceptests are single item multiple choice questions given in the middle of a lecture to assess students' learning of basic concepts. Because Conceptests are projected during class, it is relatively easy to include snippets of data. Students' understanding of the target concepts can then be assessed based on how well they interpret the data rather than how well they answer verbal questions. The Conceptests on this website use bathymetric data from mid-ocean ridges (MOR's) and test students' understanding of MOR volcanism, plate motion direction, seafloor aging, and sedimentation.
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Concept puzzles are ways to give students practice thinking about geophysical methods and problems. These are used as individual or group in-class activities that can take between 10-45 minutes.
Has minimal/no quantitative component
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Elementary grade students investigate heat transfer in this activity to design and build a solar oven, then test its effectiveness using a temperature sensor. It blends the hands-on activity with digital graphing tools that allow kids to easily plot and share their data. Included in the package are illustrated procedures and extension activities. Note Requirements: This lesson requires a "VernierGo" temperature sensing device, available for ~ $40. This item is part of the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit research and development organization dedicated to transforming education through technology. The Consortium develops digital learning innovations for science, mathematics, and engineering.
This activity represents a culmination project for this unit by means of which students can assess whether the IPCC prediction of increased storminess as an outcome of global warming survives testing. For the previous three weeks students will have conducted several inquiry-based group activities designed to introduce and reinforce fundamental meteorology/climatology concepts. In this 2-day project, students access online AVHRR SST imagery, as well as tabulated numeric data regarding historical North American tropical cyclones, import data into Excel for interpretation and analysis, and submit two group reports.
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Explore how populations change over time in a NetLogo model of sheep and grass. Experiment with the initial number of sheep, the sheep birthrate, the amount of energy sheep gain from the grass, and the rate at which the grass re-grows. Remove sheep that have a particular trait (better teeth) from the population, then watch what happens to the sheep teeth trait in the population as a whole. Consider conflicting selection pressures to make predictions about other instances of natural selection.