Phil Resor

Unit 1: Energy, Space, and Earth's Effective Temperature part of Earths Thermostat
This unit is designed to engage students by introducing them to patterns in recent climate and investigating possible reasons for recent changes. Students work in small groups to plot and analyze real-world ...

Unit 2: Earth's Atmosphere and Its Influence on Temperature part of Earths Thermostat
This unit investigates the role of the atmosphere on incoming solar and outgoing terrestrial radiation and analyzes modern trends in greenhouse gas concentrations. Students first investigate radiation spectra to ...

Unit 6: Capstone: A modern catastrophic volcanic eruption? part of Earths Thermostat
This unit is the module's capstone project: developing a conceptual model of the climatic and societal effects of a catastrophic volcanic eruption occurring in modern times. Through independent research and ...

Unit 5: Circulation in the atmosphere - a map and cross section based jigsaw part of Earths Thermostat
In this optional activity, students analyze maps of wind patterns from three levels in the atmosphere in order to infer global atmospheric circulation patterns and their role in balancing the radiation budget they ...

Unit 4: Earth's radiation balance - a map and graph-based jigsaw part of Earths Thermostat
In this two-day activity spanning Units 4 and 5, students analyze spatial variation in climate through a map-based jigsaw exploration of NASA's Earth's Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) data. By the end ...

Unit 5: Balancing the Radiation Budget: A Jigsaw Exploration of the Global Climate System (Part 2) part of Earths Thermostat
In this two-day activity spanning Units 4 and 5, students analyze spatial variation in climate through a map-based jigsaw exploration of NASA's Earth's Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) data. By the end ...

Unit 3: Energy Flows and Feedback Processes part of Earths Thermostat
In this unit, we use energy flows within the climate system to introduce climate feedbacks and system diagrams. The class session uses an interactive lecture approach having students work on multiple tasks ...

Cracking and Crumbling: Exploring Mechanisms of Dike Emplacement part of Structural Geology:Activities
Students explore the shape of basaltic dikes intruded into shale near Shiprock, New Mexico using published maps and a simple mechanical model. Students get practice in making quantitative measurements, evaluating ...

Modeling Mono Lake's Water Balance part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
In this activity students build a hydrologic model of Mono Lake in MATLAB and then use the model to evaluate the California State Water Board's 1994 decision regulating diversions from the watershed and ...

Getting inside the black box part of Teaching Computation in the Sciences:Matlab Workshop 2016:Teaching Activities
In this problem set students apply the finite difference method to develop a simple box model and then explore the impact of anthropogenic changes to the modeled system.