In this Earth Science activity, students will gain a better understanding of what gases the atmosphere is made out of. Students will need to work some math problems out, converting percents and decimal places to determine ppm, parts per million. Students will gain an understanding that greenhouse gases make up such a small amount of the atmosphere, but are extremely important in keeping the temperature balance in check.

I do this convection currents demonstration when discussing how air moves. This can be used as well when discussing volcanoes, mantle convection, and water convection. You can find the worksheet for the air convection model at Teachers Pay Teachers.

In this Earth Science or Physical Science lab, students will gain an understanding of the three types of thermal energy transfer: conduction, radiation, and convection. Students will use hot, cold, and room temperature water to demonstrate convection by using food coloring. Students will then see how long chocolate chips take to melt when you add heat to just one side of some tin foil. Finally, they will use heat lamps, thermometers, and dark and light-colored papers to demonstrate radiation and the absorption of radiated heat.

In this lab students design and experiment that will oxidize a penny. The purpose of this lab besides demonstrating chemical weathering is to assess how well students are understanding the scientific method as well as their ability to think outside the box by taking content knowledge and applying it in a lab situation. I stand back from this lab to see how well students perform. Students will observe their pennies each day until their pennies are dry or for 3 or more days, depending on how they set up their design.

In this Earth Science Earthquake activity, students will explore the USGS current earthquake website. Students will understand what is to be found on the USGS Earthquake website. They will discover how many earthquakes have occurred recently. Students will gain an understanding of what the Mercalli Intensity Scale is used for. Students will discover the 5 largest recent earthquakes that have occurred around the world. They will gain a better understanding of geography as well by using maps and map scales to determine distances from an earthquake epicenter.

In this assignment students will find images of the most common formations found in caves: helictites, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, cave popcorn, soda straws, draperies, cave bacon, columns, and boxwork They will be assigned a specific cave from a list of 18 and answer 8 out of many questions about the cave. Students get to choose the open-ended questions from a list or create their own questions. This assignment is designed to generate interest in visiting the many caves throughout the world. Many of the caves in the list are found right here in the United States.

Find out how glacier melt can raise ocean sea levels. This science video also explains thermal expansion.

Bill Nye said that the Joy of Discovery is awesome.  It is the joy of discovery that makes every human being a scientist.  We explore, test, hypothesize ,and form conclusions.  Watch this video with your students to see if they agree with what was said.  The images and videos attached to this video are beautiful.

This is a parody of the Breaking Bad series on AMC.  Studio C has a great time involving some comedy surrounding math.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, affecting over 40 million people worldwide. And though it was discovered over a century ago, scientists are still grappling for a cure. This video describes how Alzheimer's affects the brain, shedding light on the different stages of this complicated, destructive disease.