In this activity, students get to know Alfred Wegener and why and how he came up with the idea of continental drift and the super-continent Pangaea. Students will complete some internet searches to discover what type of fossils Wegener used to help him come up with his hypothesis. Students will find the time period the fossils lived, which continents they were found on, and describe both the current climate and the climate in which they prehistorically lived. Students will also cut out the Pangaea puzzle and fit the fossils, and rocks together.
NOTE: Make sure your computers can run Java-based software. Inside the preview, you can test the program out by clicking on the first link. This program will not work with Chromebooks as they can't run Java.
This video demonstrates how to create a geyser that you can show to your students. I have used this demonstration for multiple levels of science. The science of how geysers erupt is pretty well demonstrated. You can get more information of how I use it with my students at EarthScience.xyz
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 lesson, students will gain an understanding of what differential weathering is and why it happens. At the end of the 3-minute lecture, students will get an explanation of how to do a differential weathering assignment. You can find the assignment at http://earthscience.xyz/Weathering in the third section.
This is an edited version of a documentary. I made it more classroom friendly by editing out the blood, dead bodies, and swearing as well as trimming the time down to about 64 minutes. As always though watch it first before showing it to your students. This tsunami video is very heart-wrenching. Make sure you have tissues available.
In this Earth Science Lab, I have my students design an experiment that determines which sediment type is the most porous and which sediment type is the most permeable. This is a common design that my students come up with. There are others, but this one works well. For the lab, go to https://earthscience.xyz/content/porosity-and-permeability-lab
This is the edited version of the movie, Supervolcano. I took out any swearing and trimmed some of it down so that it would fit into two class periods. The science is very accurate in this video, but that being said some of the tech viewed in the videos is really meant so that students can visually see what is going on beneath the crust. This tech does not exist yet.
I took another copy of this and then edited some of the slower parts and parts that might be objectionable for High School students. This video is a Docudrama about the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano and the tsunami that follows. It is a pretty good depiction of what happened.
I blame the Coronavirus for causing boredom which in turn caused me to play with making a video for my students. In this episode, El Guapo is introduced and joins Mr. Weir in Spain to teach a cool science concept about air pressure.
