"We Need All the Assistance You Have..." part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
This exercise provides a basic introduction to volcanic hazards. Students learn about different types of volcanic hazards through researching examples from Alaskan eruptions. They also group the hazards as proximal and distal to consider how emergency response plans might differ. A recording of the KLM flight 867 flight that lost power to all four engines when it flew into an ash cloud from a 1989 Mt Redoubt eruption provides a compelling example of risk from volcanoes. (Note: the plane was ultimately able to regain enough power to land safely in Anchorage.) Students learn about the Volcano Hazards Alert-Notification System for both ground-based and aviation applications.

Constructing a 3D bathymetry model part of NAGT:Our Resources:Teaching Resources:Teaching Materials Collection
Student groups build a scaled cardboard physical model of a seafloor feature in a box, and then close the box and affix a scale. Student groups then swap boxes and perform "soundings" to determine which ...

Be Smart, Be Prepared! Planning an Emergency Backpack part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
Participants learn what to do before, during, and after a potentially damaging earthquake. They brainstorm valuable components for an emergency supplies backpack and then present on their ideas. The primary resource is the booklet Are you prepared for the next big EARTHQUAKE in Alaska?

Cupcake Geology: Interpreting Core Samples part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
This activity helps students understand how geoscientists study the Earth below our feet through drilling. Using a large straw as a "drill", students collect samples through different parts of the specially layered cupcake and keep a "log" of the drill core. By defining different colored cake and filling, they can reconstruct what the interior of the cupcake may look like. Students gain an appreciation for the challenges of determining a plausible geologic interpretation with limited data.

Investigating Factors That Affect Tsunami Inundation part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
Learners modify elements of a tsunami wave tank to investigate the affect that near-coast bathymetry (submarine topography) and coastal landforms have on how far a tsunami can travel inland. Damaging tsunami are most commonly produced by subduction zone earthquakes, such as those that occur in Alaska.

Pasta Quake: Exploring Earthquake Magnitude part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
This short activity provides an intuitive introduction to earthquake magnitude using an everyday item--spaghetti. Learners are introduced to the earthquake magnitude scale by breaking different amounts of uncooked noodles. Visual scale of the pasta emphasizes the relative differences between magnitudes with each whole step in magnitude. For older students, the demonstration helps students understand why seismologists use the nonlinear logarithmic scale to best graph the huge range of quantities.

SeismicWaves Viewer & SeismicEruption Software part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
This activity includes both the Seismic Waves Viewer and the Seismic Eruption software to help learners better understand earthquakes, volcanoes, and the structure of the Earth. Seismic Waves is a browser-based tool to visualize the propagation of seismic waves from historic earthquakes through Earth's interior and around its surface. By carefully examining these seismic wave fronts and their propagation, the Seismic Waves tool illustrates how earthquakes can provide evidence that allows us to infer Earth's interior structure. Seismic Eruption shows seismicity (earthquakes) and volcanic activity in space and time from 1960 to present. When the program is running, the user sees lights, which represent earthquakes, flashing on the screen in speeded-up time. The user can control the speed of the action. In addition, the program can show seismicity under Earth's surface in three-dimensional and cross-sectional views. Earthquakes can be selected by magnitude and volcanic eruptions can be selected by volcanic explosivity index. In this way, large earthquakes and large eruptions can be selected to emphasize how different types of plate boundaries are characterized by different magnitudes of earthquakes (e.g. no major or great earthquakes occur on spreading ocean ridges). This lesson plan was developed by , Portland Oregon. Students investigate how seismic waves travel through Earth's internal layers and bounce and bend at internal boundaries between mantle, outer core, and inner core.

Making Interdisciplinary Connections in Oceanography part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Students work alone or in groups to draw "cross plots" and make connections between ocean biology, chemistry, geology, and physics. This simple graphical tool helps students understand the ...

Microplastics and marine environment part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Marine micro-plastics are a relatively recent issue in research (Thompson et al. 2004), in the media and in education and, due to novelty and relevance, they are a suitable topic for addressing Ocean Literacy ...

GIS Analysis of Shoreline Change Using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
The Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) is a software extension for ArcGIS that allows for automated shoreline change calculations along the coast. The user must supply the shoreline data and the software ...

Coriolis Effect Activity part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
The Coriolis Effect is the deflection of moving objects when they are viewed in a rotating reference frame. In oceanography, we are most interested in how the Coriolis Effect moves winds and ocean currents on the ...

Yes Sir, That's My Baby Glacier! part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Students will create their own glacier, and explore their effect on the land, modeling how they melt, how they move, and erode and deposit sediment. Students will be able to determine and describe isostatic ...

Build Your Own Earth part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Build Your Own Earth is a freely available web site to explore the factors that affect Earth's climate. Climate model simulations reveal the annual distributions of 50 different quantities. An accompanying ...

Paleobiology: Evolution and Extinction part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
This activity introduces students to the impact of population size, population distribution, and environmental events on extinction processes.

Challenge and Persuade card game part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Developed by a team of scientists from two national laboratories, education researchers, gamers, and a professional game developer, Challenge and Persuade is a highly social, fast-paced, fun-to-play card game in ...

Activity 2.2: Issue Investigation part of Exploring Geoscience Methods
During Activity 2.2, students download, organize, and analyze geoscience data sets of sea level trends, terrestrial ice sheet trends, and intensity of tropical cyclones as well as forecast models of atmospheric CO2 ...

Unit 2: Climate Change, After the Storm part of Exploring Geoscience Methods
The goal of Unit 2 is for students to apply what they learned about the methods of geoscience to complete an authentic and data-rich, lab-based activity to address the following problem: "To what extent should ...

Modeling an Neuron Action Potential in Matlab part of Teaching Computation with MATLAB:MATLAB Workshop 2016:Teaching Activities
This lab activity is designed to teach students (1) to transform the Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) membrane model into a programmable set of equations (2) To create a working membrane patch model in MATLAB using HH kinetics ...

How Many People Can the Aquifer Support? part of NAGT:Our Resources:Teaching Resources:Teaching Materials Collection
This aquifer simulation allows students to investigate the effects of adding a city and a farm, and adding wells with different pumping rates to meet human consumption needs. Students can observe the changes in the water table, wetlands, and river outflow through generated graphs and use the simulation to analyze the effects of human activity, drought, and climate change on the availability of fresh water.

Arctic Climate Curriculum, Activity 3: Exploring Arctic Climate Data part of Climate Change:Activities
Students dig into authentic Arctic climate data to unravel some causes and effects related to the seasonal melting of the snowpack. In particular, students learn about albedo and its relationship to snowmelt. This ...