Students will use 5 different data displays to analyze the conditions inside a Force 5 hurricane.

Atmosphere
Hydropshere

grades 5-8, but adaptable for younger students

Tell students that meteorologists use many different images to describe and predict the motion of a hurricane. This activity features Hurricane Mitch, the second most deadly hurricane in Caribbean history. Students will study the storm using 5 different data sources to produce a more complete description of the storm's motion and structure.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Motions and forces
• Changes in earth and sky (K-4)
• Structure of an earth system
• Populations and environments
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: mapping, analyzing, predicting spatial data

Students will observe that the sea level changes and will hypothesize what causes this change. They will then check their hypothesis on a different data set.

Hydrosphere

grades 5-8, but can be raised to grades 9-12

Ask students what sea level is and is it always the same. Many students are surprised to learn that sea level is not the same everywhere on earth and it changes with the seasons. The main cause of this change is the temperature change in the ocean - warmer waters are higher than colder waters. Students will discover this information as they do the activity and then see if the temperature effect holds true on another data set showing temperature and sea height changes caused by the El Niño.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Properties of matter
• Structure of the earth system
• Energy in the earth system
• Environments
• Geography: mapping, analyzing, predicting spatial data

Students will observe and record sea level changes caused by an ice age and will describe why this change occurs. They will also identify the effect on human migrations.

Cryosphere

grades 5-8

Ask students what they know ice ages. Build on their comments to describe a condition when the world grows colder and ice covers more of the land. (One trigger for an ice age is a small change in the tilt of the earth's rotation axis. This information is in the software if you want to introduce the subject with your students). Tell students that the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago and that they will discover how different one part of the earth was during the ice age.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Properties of matter
• Populations and ecosystems
• Structure of the earth system
• Earth's history
• Populations and environments
• Origin and evolution of the earth system
• Geography: mapping, analyzing, predicting spatial data

Students will identify places with night lighting all around the globe and hypothesize what these bright areas indicate.

Biosphere

grades 5-8, but can be adapted for older and younger students

Ask students what they think their city or town looks like from space - especially at night. Some students may have flown on an airplane at night so they would have a good idea. Tell students that they are about to fly over the earth and map the night lights below.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky (grades K-4)
• Understandings about science and technology
• Populations and ecosystems
• Populations, resources and environments
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: mapping, analyzing, predicting spatial data

Students will observe what would happen to the Earth if the sea were to rise. They will identify places that flood and compare these places with the locations of night lights over the Earth.

Cryosphere

grades 5-8, but can be expanded upward in age

Ask students to imagine that they could change sea level and then explain that they are about to have this opportunity. (You may need to demonstrate the software before turning the activity over to the students. Moving the computer hand up or down causes the sea level to rise or fall. Moving the hand left or right causes the earth to spin.)

Specific Science Content Standards

• Properties of matter
• Populations and ecosystems
• Structure of the earth system
• Populations, resources and environments
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: mapping, analyzing, predicting spatial data

Students will plot the most recent earthquakes and volcanoes and will then correlate these locations with places where the earth's plates come together.

Geosphere

Grade 7-8. Also includes a more advanced version for older (Algebra 1 or Science) students

Ask students to describe what happens during a volcano or earthquake. Follow this question by asking students to name a recent volcano or earthquake. Explain that students will plot the recent earthquakes and volcanoes -- and then match them with the earth's moving plates. Extension: If students have already done the night life activity, they can estimate how many people live near places that are geologically active.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Structure of the earth system
• Motions and forces
• Earth's history
• Origin and evolution of the earth system
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: mapping, analyzing, predicting spatial data

Students will graph Carbon Dioxide levels against Temperature change to see the trend of one against the other, using actual ice core data.

Atmosphere

Grade 7-8. Also includes a more advanced version for older (Algebra 1 or Science) students

Tell students that ice cores can help us learn not only the temperature of the Earth in times past, but also the amount of Carbon Dioxide trapped in the air bubbles in the ice. This activity uses as source data a plot of each versus time, and asks the students to plot one variable (the Temperature) versus the other variable (the Carbon Dioxide content). Students can fit the data to a line y = mx + b to see how changes in Temperature and related to changes in Carbon Dioxide. The extended version has actual data tables to plot, and a discussion of exponential functions (Earth population).

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky
• Structure and evolution of an earth system's history
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: how to apply geography to analyze the past

Specific Mathematics Content Standards

• Variables and data
• Plotting and graphing
• Fitting to straight lines
• (extended version: correlations, logarithms, exponential functions)

Students will take a graph of Carbon Dioxide concentration as a function of time. They will learn about linear trends in the data, as well as the annual variation of Carbon Dioxide. They will predict the level of Carbon Dioxide in 2005 from the data.

Biosphere

Grade 5-8, but easily adaptable for older or younger students

Tell students that ice cores can help us learn not only the temperature of the Earth in times past, but also the amount of Carbon Dioxide trapped in the air bubbles in the ice. This activity uses as source data a plot of each versus time, and asks the students to plot one variable (the Temperature) versus the other variable (the Carbon Dioxide content). Students can fit the data to a line y = mx + b to see how changes in Temperature and related to changes in Carbon Dioxide.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky
• Structure and evolution of an earth system's history
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: Applying geography to interpret the past

Specific Mathematics Content Standards

• Variables and data
• Plotting and graphing
• Fitting to straight lines
• Extrapolation

Students will compare vegetation maps in January and July. They will see that some regions are green all year long, but other regions (in the Southern Hemisphere) are greener in January, and yet other regions (in the Northern hemisphere) are greener in July. Some regions (deserts and polar ice regions) are green neither time.

Biosphere

Grade 5-8, but easily adaptable for older or younger students

Tell students that measuring the color of the Earth can be used from space as a way to tell how healthy the Earth is. This can be done both to help farmers grow crops and to observe how deforestation has affected the Earth. As a follow-on, you can download the most recent vegetation maps in the "latest images" section of the Biosphere module, to compare today's data to an average January or July.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky
• Populations and ecosystems
• Structure and evolution of an earth system's history
• Geography: Using maps to acquire and process data

Students will take ocean temperature data from a map and plot temperature versus angle from the equator. They will learn that this is an inverse relationship - the ocean temperature decreases with distance from the equator.

Hydrosphere

Grade 7-8, but easily adaptable for older (Algebra 1 or Science) students

Tell students that measurements from space can tell us the temperature of the ocean, both on an annual average (as this map), and as measured at on any given date. For the annual average, as here, the highest temperatures are near the equator and lower temperatures as you move either northward or southward from the equator. They can choose as data points any point at that approximate latitude (note that the temperature is not uniform for a certain latitude - some areas are hotter and some are cooler). For an expansion of this activity, they can look at today's ocean temperatures in the "latest images" section of Hydrosphere or Atmosphere modules. See how the seasons affect whether the northern or southern oceans are warmer.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky
• Structure and evolution of an earth system's history
• Risks and benefits
• Geography: Using maps to acquire and process data

Specific Mathematics Content Standards

• Variables and data
• Plotting and graphing
• Linear equations

Students will take ocean wave height data from a map and ocean sea surface height data from the same location on a different map. They will plot the ocean wave height data versus the ocean sea surface height data and learn whether waves are largest where the sea height is high versus where it is low.

Hydrosphere

Grade 7-8, but easily adaptable for older (Algebra 1 or Science) students

Tell students that measurements from space can tell us the overall sea level height, and also the heights of the waves. They can choose as data points any point at that approximate latitude (note that the temperature is not uniform for a certain latitude - some areas are hotter and some are cooler. Note that this activity is a good followon to Activity 2: Is the Sea Level? , which has the student explore whether the sea level is higher in warm areas of earth or cold areas of earth. This activity uses a linear equation to quantify the relationship between wave height and sea level. (Note that the two maps use different units - the top map is measured in meters and the lower map in cm).

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky
• Motions and Forces
• Structure and evolution of an earth system's history
• Geography: Using maps to acquire and process data

Specific Mathematics Content Standards

• Variables and data
• Plotting and graphing
• Linear equations

Students will take pollution emission data and compare the levels of pollution emitted versus the number of people in the country. The students will discover that this is not a simple linear relationship - that some countries emit much more pollution that countries with larger populations.

Biosphere

Grade 7-8, but easily adaptable for older (Algebra 1 or Science) students

Tell students that humans frequently emit pollutants as a result of their activities (burning fossil fuels, deforestation, etc.) But each person on Earth does not emit the same amount of pollutants - certain countries, especially the United States, have much more pollution "per capita" than others. The students will learn from the graph how much more pollution a typical American emits than a person from other countries.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Changes in earth and sky
• Populations and ecosystems
• Understanding science and technology
• Populations, resources and environments
• Geography: How humans modify the physical environment

Specific Mathematics Content Standards

• Variables and data
• Plotting and graphing
• Linear equations

Students will measure the distance between South America and Africa at two points in the Earth's history. They will then calculate the average speed at which these two continents have been drifting apart.

Geosphere

Grade 7-8, but easily adaptable for older (Algebra 1 or Science) students

Tell students that we can measure the motion of the Earth's continental "plates" by using sensitive GPS receivers from space. If we follow that motion backwards in time, we can predict where the plates came from. The fact that the Eastern "corner" of South America appears to fit exactly into the "corner" of Africa led Wegener to suggest that the continents drifted. Mineral deposits which are very similar at corresponding places on the two continents lend credence to that view. In this exercise we take a map of the Earth as it might have looked 94 million years ago and measure the average speed of separation of these two continents over time. For one scientist's prediction of what the Earth's continents might look like in the future and the past, see the plate tectonic movies in the Geosphere/Sphere Topics library.

Specific Science Content Standards

• Motions and forces
• Structure of the Earth system's history
• Geography: The physical processes that shape the Earth's surface

Specific Mathematics Content Standards

• Variables and data
• Proportions
• Velocities
• Units of measure