Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations: Approaching Asteroid part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College
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: Collision with Asteroid part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College
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: Earth History Timeline part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College
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
Jerry Johnson (compiled by Jennifer Wenner, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh)
an exercise designed to help students get their brains around big numbers using real world examples

The Earth's Shells - Thicknesses and Densities part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Len Vacher, University of South Florida
This module explores the combination of densities and shell thicknesses that produce an aggregate density of the Earth of 5.5 g/cm3.

Scaling Galileo's Solar System - Times part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Len Vacher, University of South Florida
In this module, students are asked to look at how long it takes for planets and moons to complete their orbits, and how fast they are going.

Stokes' Law Exercise for "Rocks and Minerals" part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Karen Bartels - Northeastern Illinois University - Chicago, IL
Students in a lab qualitatively "derive" Stokes' Law by timing the settling of various objects through given fluids.

BotEC: The Scale of Earth's Atmosphere part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Peter Kresan
Question: Air is our most precious resource. Without food, we can live for weeks and without water, we can live for days. But without air to breathe, we survive about 4 minutes! If you visit the top of Mt. Lemmon ...

Density of Rocks - Some Applications part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Len Vacher, University of South Florida
This module studies some applications of being able to determine the density of rocks.

Water Quality Acquisition part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
Ming-Kuo Lee
Students practice their field water sample collection and water quality assessment skills and study acid mine drainage.