This resource covers components of the hydrologic (water) cycle. Although it is geared to high school level, middle school students could grasp the content with assistance from an instructor. Specific topics include the distribution and movement of water in the Earth system, such as evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, runoff, and ground water. Full description.

This chapter describes the technique of preparing latitude-longitude based data so that it can be imported into a geographic information system (GIS). It describes the steps to create a map to display data and guides users through some basic geographic analyses. The focus of the chapter?s case study is earthquake prediction. Users download and format near real-time and historical earthquake data from ... Full description.

In this site, the Resource Graphing Tutorial provides a listing of the tutorial modules available for help with visualizing data in Excel. The site contains basic techniques, such as data input into cells and creating scatter plot and a line; and advanced techniques, such as bar graphs and histograms, importing text files, final formatting, regression lines, superimposing graphs, descriptive statistics, ... Full description.

This website provides an easy-to-understand introduction to the basics of optical mineralogy. Topics include the polarized light microscope, mineral shape and cleavage, relief, color and pleochroism, interference colors, extinction angles, twinning, opacity, vibration directions and mineral identification. The site features short, clear descriptions accompanied by photographs and drawings. This website ... Full description.

This web site includes almost 200 photomicrographs of rocks and minerals. All photographs are of thin sections ground to .03 mm thickness, in transmitted white light. Some show the appearance of minerals in plane polarized light, but most were taken with crossed polarizers on a petrographic microscope, better to illustrate mineral properties and rock textures. The majority of the pictures show a field ... Full description.

Contour Basics is an exercise designed to introduce students to contour plots. The Contour Activity is a great on-line resource that starts slowly and increases in difficulty. It teaches students basic techniques for generating contours, introduces students to the subtleties of generating contour plots with sparse data, provides many opportunities for students to assess their own progress and understanding ... Full description.

This tutorial provides instructions for making graphs of data using Microsoft Excel Version 5.0. The step-by-step instructions cover everything from opening Microsoft Excel spreadsheet softarware to making scatter plots and column diagrams. The instructions are those which have worked best for the author and are best used with simple sets of data. This page is a good overview of using Excel version ... Full description.

Create a Graph is a service of the National Center for Education Statistics. The site contains easy to understand explanations of four different charts and graphs and a data input section for each graph. Graphs include area graph, bar graph, line graph and pie chart. Students can use homework problems, things they have a special interest in, or use some of the numbers they find elsewhere to create ... Full description.

This tutorial contains animations that illustrate factors related to seasons on Earth. There are two sets of animations. The first set establishes viewpoints for observing the seasons and the second set studies the seasons on a planet with a 40-day year. In some of the animations, the user can control variables such as time. There is also a PDF file that features a learning guide about the Seasons ... Full description.

This website contains an introduction to the principles of optical mineralogy. Topics include the petrographic microscope, light, thin sections, and basic theoretical concepts. The website features text illustrated with ample photographs, drawings, diagrams and movies. The site also contains self-tests using photomicrographs. This resource is a useful tutorial for an introduction or a review of optical ... Full description.