While commonly referred to as 'shooting stars', meteors and meteor showers are, in fact, unrelated to stars. Instead, these streaks of light are the glow of interplanetary debris crashing into Earth's atmosphere. This animated video introduces students to shooting stars and the reasons behind annual meteor showers. Topics include the difference between sporadic meteors and meteor showers, how comets ... Full description.

Earth's surface is covered with natural features formed by weathering, erosion, and deposition. Although these forces are typically associated with destruction, they have also created many of the world's natural wonders. This interactive slide show presents images of natural features (glacial valleys, petrified forests, hot springs, and others) produced by these powerful forces. A background essay ... Full description.

If you observe clouds in a portion of the sky, you may notice that they are not static. Clouds are composed of tiny particles of water and are constantly changing and moving. This video lets viewers observe clouds forming, moving, and changing shape. The segment is one minute thirty-three seconds in length. A background essay and list of discussion questions are also provided. Full description.

Night and day are determined by the Sun's presence or absence in the sky. As Earth rotates, the portion of the planet that is illuminated by the Sun experiences day while the portion that faces away from the Sun experiences night. As observed from most locations on Earth, the Sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west every day. This video segment features time-lapse photography of a sunrise ... Full description.

Most planetary scientists expected that lunar samples brought to back to Earth by the six Apollo missions would confirm one of three leading hypotheses of the Moon's origin. Instead, the samples left all three explanations unconfirmed, requiring the development of a new hypothesis for how the Moon formed. This video segment shows Apollo 15 astronauts collecting a type of rock (anorthosite) that is ... Full description.

Ocean basins are filled with loose sediments, which are the products of erosion. This sediment originates inland and is fed into oceans by rivers. Debris from cliffs and other coastal landforms provides additional sediment volume, as do skeletons, shells, teeth of marine organisms, ash from volcanoes, and even asteroids. This interactive feature shows how these different parent materials influence ... Full description.

The Manhattan Prong tour is part of the New York Landscape Regions Collection of Google Earth Tours. This tour takes students to Central Park in New York City to see metamorphic rock, glacial features, differential weathering, and Cleopatra's Needle, an Egyptian obelisk brought to the city in 1881. They can also examine bedrock, float, mass wasting, jointing, and glacial polish in the Pound Ridge ... Full description.

This demonstration of plate tectonic principles, plate boundary interactions, and the geometry and relative motions of faulting of geologic layers uses 3-D foam models. The models aid in visualization and understanding of plate motions and faulting because they are three-dimensional, concrete rather than abstract descriptions or diagrams, can be manipulated by the instructor and the students, and ... Full description.

This site provides a brief overview of the earth's climate, which is generally defined as the average weather over a long period of time. The climate of a region is determined by both natural and anthropogenic (human-made) factors. The natural elements include the atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere, while the human factors can include land and resource uses. Changes in any of these ... Full description.

This resource about Mount St. Helens, a stratovolcano in the Cascade Range best known for its violent eruption in 1980, features links to all aspects of the volcano, including real time, online video cam and current seismicity, its geographic setting, and geologic and eruptive history. Students learn of an eruption in 1800 as well as extensive details of the 1980 event. Links labeled 'Special Items ... Full description.