Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Orbital Distance Scale part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Question Let's imagine a scale model of the Earth with an orbiting Space Shuttle. Suppose that the Earth is the size of a basketball. How far above the basketball does the Shuttle orbit?

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Communication with Mars part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Question Suppose you were living in a Mars colony, and you wanted to call home to your parents on Earth. You say, "Hello! How are you?" How long do you have to wait until you hear them say, ...

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Collision with Asteroid part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Question We have located an asteroid heading directly for the Earth. It is now 1.6 million km away from the Earth, about 4 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The asteroid is travelling at 25 km/second. ...

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Approaching Asteroid part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Question If asteroids careen through the solar system at 25 km/second, how far away would we have to detect one in order to have a year's notice to prepare for an impact, as was portrayed in the movie Deep ...

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Eruption Rates part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Question Over the last 70 million years or so, the Hawaiian Hot Spot has been pumping out lava, a total of about 775,000 km3 worth. As the Pacific Plate has moved over the hot spot, the volcanic peaks and plateaus ...

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Earth History Timeline part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Question The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old. Let's try to get a perspective on how long that really is. A roll of good quality toilet paper has 1000 squares. If the roll of toilet paper represents the ...

Big Money: Intuition about big numbers using the national debt (and other governmental excess) part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
an exercise designed to help students get their brains around big numbers using real world examples

Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations part of Quantitative Skills:Teaching Methods:Back of the Envelope Calculations
Barbara Tewksbury, Hamilton College Many numbers that we use in the geosciences are outside a student's frame of reference and personal experience. Using back-of-the envelope calculations that help put very ...

Competencies in Problem-Solving Domains part of Quantitative Skills:Teaching Methods:Metacognition
Schoenfeld's Schema Based on the research on learning in mathematics, Alan Schoenfeld presents the following theoretical frame characterizing competencies in problem-solving domains: I. The knowledge base II. ...

Propagation of Error part of Quantitative Skills:Teaching Methods:Understanding Uncertainty
Numerical Method The propagation of errors in individual mathematical operations, such as addition, multiplication, raising numbers to powers, etc. can be determined with specific analytical formulas. However, the ...