Fault Models for Teaching About Plate Tectonics
Modified from an activity by Larry Braile (Purdue University) by TOTLE (Teachers on the Leading Edge) Project and further improved by ShakeAlert.
This short interactive activity has learners to manipulate fault blocks to better understand different types of earthquake-generating faults in different tectonic settings--extensional, convergent, and strike-slip. Fault models aid in visualizing and understanding faulting and plate motions because the instructor and their students can manipulate a three-dimensional model for a true hands-on experience.

Rocks are Elastic!! Seeing is Believing
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology)
This activity helps learners see the elastic properties of rocks by actually bending marble. How rocks respond to stress is a fundamental concept, critical to forming explanatory models in the geosciences (e.g., elastic rebound theory). Whereas learners are likely to have lots of experience with rocks, few will have directly experienced them behaving elastically. As a result of this "missed experience", most learners conceptualize rocks as rigid solids; a concept which generally serves students well in everyday life but impedes learning about particular geologic concepts.

Melting ice cubes
Mirjam Glessmer, University of Bergen
Explore how melting of ice cubes floating in water is influenced by the salinity of the water. Important oceanographic concepts like density and density driven currents are visualized and can be discussed on the ...

Using Vaccines to Fight Outbreaks
Science Buddies
What exactly is a vaccine? Can vaccines prevent outbreaks? How effective does a vaccine need to be to help a population during an outbreak? Students will explore these questions and more in this lesson plan by ...

Using Dendrochronology to Determine the Age and Past Environments of the Black Forest Region, Colorado, USA
Paul Grogger, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
The use of dendrochronology in determining the geologic history of a location. The development of an understanding how tree growth can indicate the relationships between climate, geomorphology, ecology and archeology.

Water Development: A Philosophical and Ethical Issue
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota-Main Campus
Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota Summary This is a seven part module that deals with water development. The goal is to get students thinking about water development in terms of its appropriateness, and ...

Wind Turbine Blade Design

Kidwind Project
Students go through the design process and the scientific process to test the effect of blade design on power output. There is an optional extension to use the data to create an optimal set of wind ...

Exploring Earth Systems Science: The Interactive GLOBE Earth System Poster
Amy Ellwein, Western Colorado University