Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?
The article Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate? provides students with discussion and other activities about how science literacy will help them: understand issues that you come across daily in news stories ...

Watersheds and Rivers
This course uses simple yet authentic methods to describe properties of a local river system in order to better understand how all rivers function. The process of science is explicitly discussed and examined ...

Earth's Natural Resource Systems
Earth's Natural Resource Systems is designed to introduce students to fundamental concepts in the Earth sciences related to rock and mineral resources, water resources, soil resources, and their role and ...

The Nature of Science in Science Teaching
This course explores philosophical and sociological questions related to the scientific enterprise. The understandings developed are then applied to questions about teaching and learning science.

General Geology lab
This is the lab portion of General Geology (Geology 101), and is designed for novice scientists or science-phobic students. Different aspects of the process of science are addressed each week in the context of ...

Mineral Cleavage: a practical experiment
In this geology activity, students investigate the physical property of mineral cleavage by physically trying to break down a block of halite and describing the results. This lab addresses many misunderstandings non-majors have about the physical properties of minerals and includes a brief write up of their conclusions.

Planetary Climate Change
What are weather and climate, how has climate changed in the past, how do we know, what causes climate to change, and how can we predict future climate? Planetary Climate Change explores scientists' current ...

Introduction to Geology
In Intro to Geology, students discover how to read and interpret landscapes and the geological products that they comprise. Topics explored include minerals, igneous processes, weathering, landslides, streams, ...

Introducing a new representation of the process of science
This set of warm-up activities uses the example of investigating the dinosaur extinction to introduce fundamental concepts regarding the nature and process of science--especially, debunking the myth of THE Scientific Method.

Scientific logic: An application to meteorological observations
A sample question/problem in which students are asked to apply the logic of scientific evidence to statements about weather patterns, based on observations on a typical surface weather map.