Think about the many sets of data you may encounter in your daily activities. You may track your finances, follow statistics for your favorite sport, watch stock market trends, or pay attention to weather records such as temperature and precipitation. News reports often include graphs that you must understand in order to follow an argument. And of course, scientists use graphs to summarize and convey information and to support hypotheses. Before the days of computers, people had to record data and perform calculations by hand. In fact, the original use of the word "computer" was to describe a person whose job was doing arithmetic. At that time, a spreadsheet was a piece of paper with ruled lines forming rows and columns where data could be written in. Today, most people use computer spreadsheets in the form of software such as Microsoft Excel -- , but the basic idea remains the same.
Student materials for this exercise include a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with marked cells and several charts and the instruction sheet (MS Word). The exercise is divided into three parts.
Part I introduces the capability of a spreadsheet to handle a large dataset containing worldwide earthquake epicenters from October 2011 and plots a scatter chart of these data, which is equivalent to a map.
In Part II, students work with several different types of charts (column, bar, pie, and triangle charts) and use tables and charts to answer questions about Earth's interior.
Part III involves entering a formula using cell names, learning to fill down, and discovering how relative and absolute cell names work. This work is done in the context of Earth's interior layers.

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This book introduces students to some of the most unusual places in our galaxy outside of our solar system. Answering the question, "How many stars are in the sky?" introduces students to basic counting, tallying, and grouping techniques, as well as allowing for the use of simple proportions.

This activity is a field investigation where students make observations of the pebble beach, lava flows, and wetland restoration at Sugarloaf Cove to generate questions to be addressed throughout the earth science curriculum.

Using a map showing the horizontal velocities of GPS stations in the Plate Boundary Observatory and other GPS networks in Alaska and Western United States, students are able to describe the motions in different regions by interpreting the vectors resulting from long-term high-precision Global Positioning System (GPS) data.
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NGSS ALIGNMENT
Disciplinary Core Ideas
History of Earth: HS-ESS1-5
Earth' Systems: MS-ESS2-2
Earth and Human Activity: MS-ESS3-2, HS-ESS3-1
Science and Engineering Practices
4. Analyzing and Interpreting Data
5. Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking
6. Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
Crosscutting Concepts
4. Systems and System Models
7. Stability and Change

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The goal of this laboratory is to help students understand that burning fossil fuels, which results in an increase in the acidity of ocean waters, has a detrimental impact on marine life (specifically coral but also other organisms that have calcium carbonate based shells).

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Students will explore time series plots and raw data to understand the role of sea surface temperature increases on arctic ice melt. This is part three of a four-part activity on polar science. The activity builds on the knowledge gained in Using Data and Images to Understand Albedo (part 2). Extension activities examining air and sea surface temperature in relation to changing Earth albedo are included. Information is provided on data access using the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Web site. This activity is one of several learning activities connected with the 2007 GLOBE Earth system poster.

Google Earth enhances traditional geologic maps by allowing the viewer to explore three-dimensional map patterns and the interaction between structure and topography in dictating those map patterns. This activity overlays 4, 7.5' USGS quadrangles on Google Earth terrain and imagery data and encourages students to investigate common features of fold-and-thrust belts.

Keywords: Google Earth, fold-and-thrust belt, visualization

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This laboratory exercise explores the topographic signature of fluvial and glacial landscapes in different tectonic environments. Students develop a list of mountain ranges around the world to explore, then extract topographic data from 90-meter SRTM DEMs, and develop a series of hypsometric curves for each range. Each student works on a single range, but as a class we build up a database of 10-15 ranges around the world. The hypsometric curves are compared with each other and with published curves to look for signals of fluvial incision vs. glacial erosion in the landscapes.

In this exercise, students use both polyhedral model kits designed by the University of Wisconsin at Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) Institute for Chemical Education and computer visualization in Jmol to explore the structures of a variety of phyllosilicate minerals, and relate those structures to physical properties. Students work in small groups to build either a sequence of dioctahedral or trioctahedral minerals and answer a series of questions about structure, arrangement, coordination and bonding. The small dioctahedral and trioctahedral groups combine to compare structures and discuss additional questions about these and other minerals.

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During this module students use multiple experiences (reading, video,
the outdoors, a survey of their water footprints, writing, and lots of
discussion) to examine how life today, in comparison to pre-industrial
times, makes our connections to water virtually invisible. Students use
the class's water footprint results to find out how agricultural and
industrial water uses link us to people distant in both place and time.
They weigh the consequences of these invisible connections in creating
the lost sense of dependence and responsibility that typifies
unsustainability. Students study the variability of water footprints
within our class to help identify more sustainable personal choices.
They consider the activity of a local watershed association to educate
and involve people in improving the quality of local streams as a model
of how community action can accomplish what individuals cannot.

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This assignment requires students to visit a local geologic feature. Students choose a field site, visit it and observe features such as weathering, rock type, folding, or faulting. At their field site, they are encouraged to make sketches and take photographs. They will turn in a description of the site, geologic origin, and geomorphologic evolution. This assignment is especially useful for non-majors who may not normally be interested in outdoor activities.

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In this activity, students examine global climate model output and consider the potential impact of global warming on tropical cyclone initiation and evolution. As a follow-up, students read two short articles on the connection between hurricanes and global warming and discuss these articles in context of what they have learned from model output.

Once the pride of the German Navy, this 700 foot long heavy cruiser was used by the U.S. as a test target for not one but two atom bombs at Bikini atoll. Today, at the bottom of the ocean, the radiation levels of the Prinz Eugen are low enough for safe exploration. In this video, Jonathan joins historian Mark Miller on a trip to explore this mysterious shipwreck. What they find about the condition of this wreck is surprising. Please see the accompanying lesson plan for educational objectives, discussion points and classroom activities.

This exercise is designed to give the students a hands-on experience in which they can relate different orientations of an indicatrix to the different birefringence observed for each orientation. Each student is given a piece of fruit that has the shape of a uniaxial indicatrix - either a kiwi (uniaxial positive) or a tangerine (uniaxial negative). The student follows a set of instructions to insert toothpicks to represent the different indicatrix axes and to draw on the fruit using a permanent marker the circular and principal sections. Then the student is asked a series of questions asking them to determine the birefringence of the mineral for different orientations of the fruit.

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Most introductory geology students have experience identifying hand-sized rock samples in the lab, but never get to see bigger rock exposures outside the classroom. This activity includes takes students to downtown Seattle, where they observe the geology of the building stones within a few blocks of campus. The exercise exposes students to large, polished rock samples in an area where they are familiar, but might not have noticed the rocks before. For students on urban campuses or online geology classes with a limited amount of lab time this is a useful activity.

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In this activity, students work in groups to put a set of cartoon cards in order, much in the way that we might assemble a geologic history. The primary goal of the activity is to explore the nature of science in general and the nature of geoscience or historical science specifically, without requiring any content knowledge.

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This lab is designed to be a highly interactive lab session for a petrology course, where instructors provide a minimal level of essential background and then the entire group works together to explore mineral chemistry. In using a new piece of technology, students can "learn as they go." The point is not to understand every aspect of how an instrument works or to become proficient users, but rather to use the visual impact of the output to catch their interest and advance their analytical skills in the process. I find this lab works very well as a bridge between two semesters of a typical Mineralogy-Petrology sequence. Having completed crystallography, systematic mineralogy and optical, students find this a welcome change of pace and it helps them to start thinking about how mineral associations form the basis of petrology. It is also a great reinforcement and integration of mineralogy and chemistry, allowing you to leap off into crystal chemistry more deeply.

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Students read an article titled "The Sixth Extinction" by Niles Eldredge on past mass extinctions and the current rate of loss of species. The instructor can choose from a suite of activities which include having students respond to discussion and extension questions about the article, write an essay on the article defending Eldredge's view, create an extinction chart, and debate the actions of stakeholders faced with an endangered species vs. human water needs scenario. Students will need to research additional references to complete the activities and be prepared to defend their positions.

These are two crossword puzzles that I hand out for extra credit, one for the igneous half of the course and the other for the metamorphic half. The puzzles reinforce concepts, vocabulary, and mineral formulae that we have gone over in class and labs. The students *love* them, and usually end up working on them in groups. Both puzzles were created using the Discovery Channel Puzzlemaker: http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com.

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students are engaged in reflecting on whether plate tectonics is a general theory of planetary organization and evolution. Students use topographic, magnetic, spectral, and other data from NASA and ESA missions to determine whether "Earth-style" plate tectonics is functional on planets and moons elsewhere in the solar system. Students are engaged in a data-rich environment from which they must formulate and test multiple hypotheses. Throughout the process, students are engaged in small groups to identify what they need to learn to answer their questions, what resources are available to them, how best to report their findings, and how they can assess the amount of learning that is taking place.