Capstone Project Stage 1
Gigi Richard, Fort Lewis College
The goal of the Future Food Scenarios capstone project is for the students to investigate the food systems in a particular region in depth, and in particular to identify the current situation, determine the ...

LEGO® Magma Crystallization Activity
Jessica Larsen, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This exercise uses LEGO® Magma Crystallization Activity building blocks to demonstrate in a simple way how zoned crystals can form in magmas. The exercise also shows how the surrounding melt changes in composition ...

Exploring Spreadsheets with Microsoft Excel
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students work with a large set of earthquake data, examine types of charts available in Excel, and use a spreadsheet to ...

Module 8: Pests and Integrated Pest Management
Heather Karsten, Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
This module introduces three types of agricultural pests (insects, weeds, and pathogens), integrated pest management, and some of the transgenic crop technologies developed to reduce crop pests.

Solving the 1D Schrodinger Equation
Morgan Hawker, California State University-Fresno
In this activity, students will explore 1-dimensional solutions to the time-independent Schrodinger equation. Students will utilize a provided MATLAB live script to determine exact energy values for two different ...

Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (High School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

Volcano Monitoring with GPS: Westdahl Volcano Alaska
Maite Agopian, EarthScope; Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope Consortium
Learners use graphs of GPS position data to determine how the shape of Westdahl Volcano, Alaska is changing. If the flanks of a volcano swell or recede, it is a potential indication of magma movement and changing ...

Exploring Tectonic Motions with GPS
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Using a map showing the horizontal velocities of GPS stations in the Plate Boundary Observatory and other GPS networks in Alaska and Western United States, students are able to describe the motions in different regions by interpreting the vectors resulting from long-term high-precision Global Positioning System (GPS) data. Show more information on NGSS alignment Hide NGSS ALIGNMENT Disciplinary Core Ideas History of Earth: HS-ESS1-5 Earth' Systems: MS-ESS2-2 Earth and Human Activity: MS-ESS3-2, HS-ESS3-1 Science and Engineering Practices 4. Analyzing and Interpreting Data 5. Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking 6. Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions Crosscutting Concepts 4. Systems and System Models 7. Stability and Change

Measuring Plate Motion with GPS: Iceland | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
This lesson teaches middle and high school students to understand the architecture of GPS—from satellites to research quality stations on the ground. This is done with physical models and a presentation. Then students learn to interpret data for the station's position through time ("time series plots"). Students represent time series data as velocity vectors and add the vectors to create a total horizontal velocity vector. They apply their skills to discover that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is rifting Iceland. They cement and expand their understanding of GPS data with an abstraction using cars and maps. Finally, they explore GPS vectors in the context of global plate tectonics.

Measuring the Inclination and Declination of the Earth's magnetic field with a smartphone
Avradip Ghosh, University of Houston-University Park
The poles of the Earth's magnetic field are not precisely aligned with the geographic north and south poles and, in fact, vary continuously. This activity introduces to students the Earth's magnetic ...