Locating an Earthquake with Seismic Data
To understand plate tectonic processes and hazards, and to better understand where future earthquakes are likely to occur, it is important to locate earthquakes as they occur. In this activity students use ...

Exploring Spreadsheets with Microsoft Excel
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students work with a large set of earthquake data, examine types of charts available in Excel, and use a spreadsheet to ...

Unit 3: What's in YOUR watershed?
Jonathan Harvey, Fort Lewis College, and Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
In this unit, students investigate water resources of their own area or another area of personal interest, which typically gets them very excited. They apply their knowledge from Units 1 and 2 to identify the water ...

Unit 6: Predictions and Evacuation
Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; Josh Galster, Montclair State University; Joan Ramage, Lehigh University
Students watch a video and read about past evacuations, including a premature or unnecessary evacuation, a late or botched evacuation, and about people determined to stay put no matter what. Students participate in ...

Working with Climate Change Data
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students use spreadsheets to create graphs data related to climate change: sunspots, insolation, carbon dioxide, and global ...

3D View from a Drone | Make a 3D Model From Your Photos
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Using cameras mounted to drones, students will design and construct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform in a process called structure from motion (SfM). This activity has both a hands-on component (collecting data with the drone) and a computer-based component (creating the 3-dimensional model).___________________Drones can take photos that can be analyzed later. By planning ahead to have enough overlap between photos, you take those individual photos and make a 3-dimensional image!In this activity, you guide the students to identify an outcrop or landform to study later or over repeat visits. They go through the process to plan, conduct, and analyze an investigation to help answer their science question.The Challenge: Design and conduct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform, then analyze the image and interpret the resulting 3-d image.For instance they might wish to study a hillside that has been changed from a previous forest fire. How is the hillside starting to shift after rainstorms or snows? Monitoring an area over many months can lead to discoveries about how the erosional processes happen and also provide homeowners, park rangers, planners, and others valuable information to take action to stabilize areas to prevent landslides.

Seafloor Spreading: Bathymetry, Anomalies, and Sediments
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students study the bathymetry of the South Atlantic, use magnetic reversals to interpret marine magnetic anomalies, and ...

Unit 3: Static GPS/GNSS Methods
Ben Crosby, Idaho State University
The application of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in the earth sciences has become commonplace. GNSS data can produce high-accuracy, high-resolution measurements in common reference frames. Static GNSS ...

Unit 3: Gravity and Magnetics Field Data Exercises
Using magnetic and gravity field to make interpretations about the subsurface. Andy Parsekian, University of Wyoming (aparseki@uwyo.edu) Download a ZIP file of this Unit
This activity focuses on practical application of concepts discussed in Units 1 and 2 through the analysis of measured or provided field datasets. Students will follow experimental procedures to measure gravity ...

Pinpointing Location with GPS Demonstration: How GPS Works (Part 2)
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Using string, bubble gum, and a model of a GPS station, demonstrate how GPS work to pinpoint a location on Earth.Precisely knowing a location on Earth is useful because our Earth's surface is constantly changing from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tectonic plate motion, landslides, and more. Thus, scientists can use positions determined with GPS to study all these Earth processes.