Determining Mantle Temperature and Composition from Discontinuities part of Deep Earth:Activities
This pair of activities uses observations of mantle discontinuity structure to examine mantle heterogeneity and differences in the depth extent of melt sources for ridges and "hotspots." The first ...

Nitrate Levels in the Rock Creek Park Watershed, Washington DC, 1: Measures of Central Tendency part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students examine the histogram of a positively skewed data set and calculate its mean, median and mode.

What Does the Mean Mean? Describing Eruptions at Riverside Geyser, Yellowstone National Park part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum/Geology of National Parks module. Students study measures of central tendency in a bimodal dataset of eruption intervals.

How Does Surface Deformation at an Active Volcano Relate to Pressure and Volume Change in the Magma Chamber? part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
SSAC Physical Volcanology module. Students build a spreadsheet to examine and apply the Mogi model for horizontal and vertical surface displacement vs. depth and pressure conditions in the magma chamber.

What is the Relationship between Lava Flow Length and Effusion Rate at Mt Etna? part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
SSAC Physical Volcanology module. Students use Excel to determine a log-log relationship for flow length vs effusion rate and compare it with a theoretical expression for the maximum flow length.

Porosity and Permeability of Magmas part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
SSAC Physical Volcanology module. Students build a spreadsheet for an iterative calculation to find volume of bubbles and hence porosity, permeability and gas escape as a function of depth.

Carbon Sequestration in Campus Trees part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students use allometric relationships to calculate tree mass from trunk diameter in a stand of trees in the Pacific Northwest.

Shifting Sands: Quantifying Shoreline and Dune Migration at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students use weighted averages and data from air photos from 1939 to 2005 to calculate the rate of retreat of the shoreline and the advance of the front of dunes along the shoreline.

From Isotopes to Temperature: Working With A Temperature Equation part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students build a spreadsheet to examine from a dataset the relation between oxygen isotopes in corals and the temperature of surrounding seawater.

Lithospheric Density part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Teaching with SSAC:Examples
Students learn about the weighted mean by building spreadsheets that apply this concept to the average density of the oceanic lithosphere.