These interactive exercises are designed to help students learn about river processes like discharge, flooding, and flood frequency. Each activity requires them to make careful observations and measurements, do simple calculations, and answer questions about their work. An interactive feedback and answer checking function checks their work. A Certificate of Completion is available at the end of each ... Full description.

This six-day unit has students investigate the challenges of living and working in Antarctica and how researchers prepare for them, and then evaluate the insulating properties of a variety of fabrics, collecting their findings in a portfolio. The comprehensive curriculum materials at this site include an online activity in which students review the preparation materials given to researchers before ... Full description.

This website complements the book "Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth" written by Dr. Art Sussman. The website includes animations, lesson plans and experiments that can be used in conjunction with the book. The number of items are continually being increased as a result of collaboration with K-12 teachers and field testing. It also includes the complete text of the first chapter which introduces systems ... Full description.

Project SkyMath is a mathematics module for middle school students, developed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The goal of the pilot project is to demonstrate that acquiring and using current environmental and real-time weather data in middle school classrooms, in ways that embrace the dynamic and the uncertain natures of these data, will promote the teaching and learning ... Full description.

This series of activities and experiments demonstrates the importance of feedbacks and the balance of mass and energy in governing the response of any system to change. Energy balance and the factors that cause change (feedbacks) are the keys to understanding climate change, and therefore the keys to understanding the effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases on the environment. Although these ... Full description.

Project Oceanography is a live television program designed for middle school science students. Each week during the school year, students can learn about a variety of ocean science topics. Some of the topics covered include: Antarctic oceanography, marine debris, tsunamis, plankton, hydrodynamic flow through seagrass beds, channel islands, kelp forests, cold seeps, pollution, and water quality. Programs ... Full description.

This on-line expedition focuses on the flow of ocean water along with its climatic impact and environmental consequences. Learning objectives include an awareness that ocean waters are constantly on the move, that ocean currents influence climate and living conditions for plants and animals, even on land, and that currents flow in complex patterns affected by wind, the water's salinity and heat content, ... Full description.

In this module, students carry out a number of activities that demonstrate the concepts of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and soil moisture and runoff. The students then construct a terrarium as a way to observe the water cycle as a whole. Immediately following this, students use the Internet to acquire Real Time Data from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington which they can then use to describe ... Full description.

This series of activities demonstrates some effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases on climate. Specifically, it shows how an increase of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere raises temperatures; higher temperatures affect the water cycle, and rising sea levels could affect coastal areas as a result of glacial and polar ice melt. Although these activities are designed to teach specific skills ... Full description.

This activity explores the potential for climate variability and change to trigger more frequent occurrences of El Nino, and the impacts that could result. Designed to teach through scientific inquiry, the activity seeks to stimulate thought about the long-term impacts of a warmer planet. Through their participation in this activity, students will access information at remote sites using telecommunications, ... Full description.