Earth Science

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Page last edited 5/2/2012



Dinosaurs | Earthquakes & Volcanoes | Fossils & Geologic History | Gems & Minerals
Oceanography | Plate Tectonics | Time | Weather & Climate

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1. American Museum of Natural History (site map)
2. Analemma - Have you ever seen this figure-8 on a globe and wondered what it is? This set of pages will clear that up for you.
3. Antarctica Web links
4. Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears - An online professional development magazine for elementary teachers which focuses on preparing teachers to teach polar science
5. Clocks in the Rocks you may also find useful information on the subject by looking at Clocks in Rocks: Isotopes and Age of Earth
6. Digital Library for Earth System Education - select resource type and begin finding some great earth science resources
7. Dinosaurs
   1. 3-D eye-popping photos from the Smithsonian Multi-Media Dinosaur Museum (3-D glasses are needed at this site. Don't have 'em? No problem! This site includes instructions for making your own.)
   2. Curse of T. Rex - a NOVA program
   3. Cretaceous Dinosaurs || Jurassic Dinosaurs
   4. Dinosaur Hall - at the Academy of Natural Sciences
   5. DinoBase - a dinosaur Web Site at University of Bristol, UK
   6. Dinosaurs - Build a Dinosaur - Walking with Prehistoric beasts. Put together the skeleton of the dinosaur and watch it walk away.
   7. Dino Buzz - current topics concerning dinosaurs
   8. Dinosaur Data Files -These dinosaur data files have been designed so that they can be printed and photocopied for educational use in the classroom, at home or in the Museum itself. Also there are some suggestions for activities you may like to try, and a spreadsheet file in Excel format containing much of the data in these data files for further classroom work.
   9. Dinosaur Eggs Museum - an online egg hunt from National Geographic
   10. Dinosaurs : Facts and Fiction from USGS
   11. Dinosaur Illustrations - An Index of Links to Great Dinosaur and other Prehistoric Art
   12. Dinosaur Information Sheets - from ZoomDinosaurs.com
   13. Dinosaur pages on a more elementary level can be found at ZoomDinosaur.com
   14. Dinosauria
   15. Dinosauria: Truth is Stranger than Fiction - Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, California.
   16. Dinosaurium - links from the Hooper Virtual Natural History Museum in Canada
   17. Dinosaur Guide - from the Discovery Channel
   18. Discovering Dinosaurs - explore our evolving conceptions of these extraordinary creatures
   19. Haddonfield, N. J. - Site of Historic 1858 Dinosaur Find
   20. Land O' Dinosaurs - Learn a bit about the dinosaur from BillyBear4Kids
   21. Science & Nature - Dinosaurs (from BBC)
   22. Top 10 Misconceptions about Dinosaurs
   23. Walking with Dinosaurs from the BBC
   24. What Killed the Dinosaurs? - from PBS
8. Earth Bulletin - [scroll down to find the Earth section] stories which explain the science behind current environmental and atmospheric events on our planet
9. Earth from Space : presented by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Scientific Visualization Studio - Be sure to visit the " Great Zooms, " or " Great Zooms for 17 U.S. Cities. "
10. Earth Sciences Internet Resources from U C Berkeley
11. Earthshots - satellite images of environmental change
12. Earth Revealed - (registration required, it is free ) a video instructional series from Annenberg Media on geology for college and high school classrooms and adult learners - 26 half-hour video programs - Segments: Down to Earth, The Restless Planet, Earth's Interior, The Sea Floor, The Birth of a Theory, Plate Dynamics, Mountain Building, Earth's Structures, Earthquakes, Geologic Time, Evolution Through Time, Minerals: The Materials of Earth, Volcanism, Intrusive Igneous Rocks, Weathering and Soils, Mass Wasting, Sedimentary Rocks: The Key to Past Environments, Metamorphic Rocks, Running Water I: Rivers, Erosion and Deposition, Running Water II: Landscape Evolution, Groundwater, Wind, Dust and Deserts, Glaciers, Waves, Beaches and Coasts, and Living With Earth, Parts I & II
13. Earth Systems on the Middle School Earth Science Explorer page. Two excellent examples of what you will find there are; plate tectonics , and geologic time .
14. Earthquakes and Volcanoes
    1. 10 Largest Earthquakes in the World : 1900 to 1994 from the National Earthquake Information Center.
    2. Big Trouble in Earthquake Country - Designed for grades 9 -12, this interactive lesson should take about 4 hours. Real-time data collection is emphasized, and teachers should be prepared to provide maps of the area. A hypothetical earthquake will occur and local consequences must be anticipated.
    3. Earthforce is all about volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and avalanches
    4. Earth's Active Volcanoes by Geographic Region
    5. Earthquakes: Nature's Fury - from National Geographic
    6. Finding Earthquake Epicenters - a java applet
    7. Killer Wave: Tsunami - from National Geographic Kids
    8. The Mighty Volcano is an Internet Field Trip put together by Scholastic.
    9. Pillow Lava - Look below the two pictures of pillow lava. Make sure you visit the related video clips and the related virtual sites .
    10. Recent Central U.S. Earthquakes - Center for Earthquake Research and Information,.a Tennessee Board of Regents Center of Excellence at the University of Memphis devoted to understanding the causes and consequences of earthquakes and the structure and evolution of the continental lithosphere.
    11. Savage Earth from PBS
    12. Savage Earth animations - Animations include hot zones, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis
    13. Seismic Waves - This real-time 3D application allows users to create seismic waves of any magnitude and pass them through a variety of terrains. The student can view the seismic activity in the terrain through both a textured and wire frame view.
    14. TCAP links at Internet4Classrooms
    15. TechTopics: Earthquakes - interactive Flash movie about earthquakes divided into six topics
    16. Tsunamis
    17. Tsunamis - How the Asian Tsunami happened
    18. Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory - VTSO compiles a Southeastern US Earthquake Catalog which can be browsed or downloaded.
    19. Volcano World - The Web's Premier Source of Volcano Info. This site is hosted by the University of North Dakota.
    20. Volcanoes: Can We Predict Volcanic Eruptions? - A complete volcano unit from Annenberg/CPB
    21. Volcanoes: Nature's Fury - from National Geographic
    22. Volcano Hazards Program - from the USGS.
    23. Volcanoes Page from the Michigan Technological University
15. The Edwards Aquifer is a unique groundwater system and one of the most prolific artesian aquifers in the world.
16. Exploring Earth: Explore the World of Earth Science - An online textbook from McDougal Littell
17. Fossils and Geologic History
    1. The Age of the Earth
    2. Amber: Window to the Past - Click on different pieces of amber to find out what is captured inside and what clues the fossilized remains provide about ancient ecosystems.
    3. Evolution from PBS
    4. Evolution: Theory and History - including journey into the world of phylogenic systematics.
    5. Extinctions from PBS
    6. Fantastic Fossil Finds - Burgess Shale, LaBrea tar pits, Solnhofen Quarry, and Subtropical Eocene Fossil Forests of the North
    7. Fossil Database - from the Natural History Museum of London
    8. Fossil News - from Science Daily
    9. Geologic Time and the age of the earth.
    10. Geology and Geologic Time - General history of the science, links to each of the eras and the life in them.
    11. History of Flight - Pterosaurs, Bird Evolution, Insect Flight and Archaeopteryx
    12. Hooper Virtual Natural History Museum - posted by The Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
    13. Horse Evolution
    14. Human Fossil Database - browse or search the database, or use their timeline
    15. Invertebrates - Gastropoda & Cephalopoda
    16. Life Has a History - an educational module sponsored by the National Science Foundation (select level 3 for 9-12)
    17. Microscopic fossils - Foraminifera & Arcellaceans
    18. Museum of Paleontology - posted by University of California, Berkley
    19. Paleogeography Through Geologic Time
    20. Paleontological Collection Catalogs and related resources
    21. Paleontology Without Walls - Introduction to the UCMP Virtual Exhibits
    22. The Pleistocene - 1.8 million to 11,000 years ago
    23. Pleistocene Animals of the Midwestern U.S.
    24. Timelines - Travel back to different time periods in the history of the earth. Vivid, fleshed-out reproductions of the extinct creatures appear in scenes depicting their environments as they might have been millions of years ago.
    25. Trilobite : A guide to the order of Trilobites
18. Gems and Minerals
    1. Crystallography and Mineral Crystal Systems - a nine part explanation that's very complete.
    2. Gem and Mineral collection from the Smithsonian. Almost four dozen of the most beautiful naturally occurring minerals or polished gemstones from the collection.
    3. Gemstone Gallery offers good information about the mineral to accompany excellent pictures.
    4. Gemstone Index - an alphabetical listing, you can also search by color or by birthstone
    5. Mindat.org is the largest mineral database on the internet. Currently there are 11,185 different minerals, varieties and synonyms listed, and information on 159,326 mineral occurrences worldwide, from 29,868 different sites.
    6. The Mineral Gallery - A service of Amethyst Galleries,Inc., "The First Internet Rock Shop"
    7. Mineral Identification - movie and quiz.
    8. Minerals - Mix and Match - identify, quizzes and more.
    9. Rock and Mineral Identification - Can you match the name with the picture?
    10. TheImage.com offers their own Mineral Gallery with good information about the mineral to accompany the picture.
    11. Mineralogy Database in HTML Format. This mineral database contains more than 5,000 pages of mineral data. There are 3,968 individual mineral species descriptions with links
    12. Minerals - See a photograph and get a description of physical characteristics of the mineral.
    13. The Physical Characteristics of Minerals - an explanation of the physical properties most useful for mineral identification
    14. Rock and Mineral Database - from the Natural History Museum of London
    15. Rocks, Minerals, and Soil - Play this game and learn about characteristics of rocks, minerals, and soil.
    16. Rocks - from the Earthlab Datasite at the Natural History Museum of London
    17. The Virtual Lab of Minerals - properties defined along with a video, explore the samples in the virtual lab.
19. Geography4Kids - a mixture of Earth Science and Social Studies topics
20. Geologic Information from the Unites States Geological Survey (USGS)
21. Geysers and Earth's Plumbing System
22. Glaciers
    1. All About Glaciers - a glacier site with something for everyone from glaciologists to grade school students
    2. Glaciers and Glaciations - Ice Sheets, Glacial Lakes, Tuyas (from the USGS)
    3. Glaciers and Ice Sheets
    4. Glaciers and the Glacial Ages - the story of Charlotte , the Vermont Whale
    5. Glaciers in the News - from the USGS
    6. Illustrated Glossary of Alpine Glacial Landforms - Click on a feature to see an illustrated example of that feature
    7. Multimedia History of Glacier Bay
    8. Online Glacier Photograph Database - The National Snow and Ice Data Center
    9. The Retreat of Glaciers in the Midwestern U.S. (18,000 to 8,000 Years Ago) - five maps trace the retreat of the glaciers of the last Ice Age
    10. Tour of Park Geology - Glaciers and Glacial Landforms (from the National Park Service)
    11. World Glacier Inventory - interactive map
    12. World View of Global Warming - Glaciers, Glacial Warming, and Receding Glaciers
23. Globes
    1. A Simple Globe - from Canon's Bubble Jet Printer Creative Park
24. Here Comes the Sun : A Solar/Terrestrial Tutorial from the Plymouth State College Meteorology Program.
25. Hours of Daylight - use this java applet to determine the number of hours of daylight for any location and date.
    1. Rise and Set Times for the Sun and Moon - To find today's Rise and Set Times for the Sun and Moon anywhere in the continental US, click on the map at the desired location.
26. Lesson Plans
    1. Teacher developed earth and space science lessons and classroom activities posted by the University of California
27. NASA Educational Resources
28. Natural Hazards Support System - from USGS
29. NOVA - an index of previous NOVA exhibits on the subject Earth
30. Oceanography
    1. Cleaner Oceans - A Secondary School Kit on the United Nations: International Maritime Organization (IMO)
    2. Geological Oceanography - pictures posted for a college course
    3. Global Sea floor Topography from Satellite Altimetry from NOAA
    4. Killer Wave: Tsunami - from National Geographic Kids
    5. El Nino sites -
       1. El Nino - Hot Air over Hot Water
       2. El Nino Theme Page : Accessing Distributed Information Related to El Nino
       3. Tropical Atmosphere Ocean - a place where your students can gather real time data
       4. NOAA El Nino
       5. Nova On-Line Adventure featuring El Nino.
    6. Ocean Floor Topography - This image is just over 500 Kb but it is worth the download time.
    7. Ocean Related Links presented by the Year of the Ocean web site
    8. Ocean Waves - This is a real-time 3D wave simulator which demonstrates the connection between wind speed and ocean particle motion depth. The student can modify the properties of an ocean wave and see the effect from any perspective.
    9. Oceans Alive - a series of pages from the Museum of Science
    10. Savage Seas from PBS
    11. Sea Surface Temperature Analysis from NOAA's National Oceanographic Center
    12. Sea Surface Temperature - current data
    13. Sea Surface Temperature Imagery - Ocean Remote Sensing from Johns Hopkins University
    14. Unisys offers a detailed map of current sea surface temperature
31. Plate Tectonics
    1. Animations Plate Tectonics animation
    2. Animations in the form of PowerPoint shows are available from the PLATES project at the University of Texas.
    3. Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics - a 41 slide PowerPoint show with excellent images and animations.
    4. This Dynamic Earth - The story of Plate Tectonics from the USGS
    5. Earth's Interior & Plate Tectonics - covers the following: The Earth's Interior, The Lithosphere & Plate Tectonics, Oceanic Lithosphere, Continental Lithosphere and Plate Tectonics.
    6. Hell's Crust: Our Ever Changing Planet - from the PBS Savage Earth series, several good animations can be found at this site.
    7. How the Plates Move - a lesson from Volcano World
    8. History - Plate Tectonics: The Rocky History of an Idea
    9. Major Tectonic Plates of the World - The earth's surface is broken into seven large and many small moving plates clearly labeled on this map
    10. Major Types of Plate Boundaries - good illustration from the USGS
    11. Mechanisms
    12. Movement of Seismic Waves - high quality transparency master
    13. Moving Slabs - simple tectonic plate map from USGS
    14. Observe animations of processes that occur along plate boundaries (transform, convergent and diverging)
    15. Paleomap Earth History maps
    16. Paleomap VR animations
    17. Plate Tectonics - from a show hosted by WHYY
    18. Plate Tectonics - the Cause of Earthquakes
    19. Plate tectonics animations - produced for the US Geological Survey video Secrets in Stone. They have been converted to animated gifs for web display
    20. Plate Tectonics map and a description of the three types of boundaries.
    21. Plate Tectonic Movement Visualizations - index of a large number of resources
    22. Plate Tectonics Practice Exam - twenty-two multiple-choice questions developed by university students
    23. Plate Tectonic Puzzle - lesson plan including puzzle pieces to cut out
    24. Plate Tectonics Quiz - ten multiple-choice questions from Geography4Kids
    25. Plate Tectonics Quiz - twelve multiple-choice questions, each on a separate page
    26. Plate Tectonics Quiz - press Start then click on the named part of the drawing - his is hard! or
    27. Plate Tectonics Quiz - twenty multiple-choice questions from Glencoe Science
    28. Plate Tectonic Reconstruction Service - In this section you can calculate plate tectonic reconstructions of any age back to 150 My.
    29. Recent Earthquakes: Last 8 to 30 days - from USGS
    30. Savage Earth animations - Animations include hot zones, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis
    31. Science Odyssey: You Try It: Plate Tectonics - A hands-on exercise about plate tectonics and earthquakes from PBS. (requires Shockwave plug-in) or
    32. Seismic Waves - This real-time 3D application allows users to create seismic waves of any magnitude and pass them through a variety of terrains. The student can view the seismic activity in the terrain through both a textured and wire frame view.
    33. Small Animation - single small graphic showing plate movement through time
    34. Subduction - the birth place of a volcanic mountain range [good animation]
    35. Teaching about Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics - plan for a virtual journey to the earth's center
    36. Tectonic Plates - high quality transparency master
    37. This Dynamic Earth - The story of Plate Tectonics from the USGS
32. Rapid Climate Change - The Younger Dryas Cold Episode
33. Saving tomorrow's world - An Intermediate School Kit on the United Nations: United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
34. Science Education Gateway posted by the Lawrence Hall of Science has a stated goal of providing science teachers in grades 4-12 with Earth and Space Science resources and classroom activities that use the Internet.
35. Scientific Visualization Studio from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This is their image wall page.
36. Sea & Sky: a site dedicated to the last two great frontiers
37. Search for Ice and Snow - Designed for grades 4 - 12, students will use Earth images to try to find places on Earth where there is ice and snow. Many links are provided to guide students to places where Space Shuttle images can be found. Teachers will need to provide a world map for students to mark on.
38. Seasons - find exactly when the seasons start for any year from 1902 to 2102 with this java applet
39. Seasons and Solstices - an Internet field trip from Scholastic
40. SETI Information posted by the SETI Institute - information on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
41. Solar Cookers
    1. Build a Solar Cooker - plans for several cookers
    2. The "Minimum" Solar Box Cooker - A great solar oven you can build quickly from two cardboard boxes
    3. How to build a solar hot dog cooker -
    4. Solar Cooking Archive
    5. Sun activities for Kids - make a hot dog cooker from an oatmeal box
42. Sundials - Make your own sundial (if you live in South Africa). Even if you can not print a template for your location, you can find some good sundial information there.
43. Sundial - from Canon's Bubble Jet Printer Creative Park
44. Then and Now - A Science Odyssey takes you on a journey through the most spectacular 100 years in the history of science and technology.
    1. Mysteries of the Universe; Physics and Astronomy
    2. Origins; Earth and Life Sciences
45. The Water Cycle - US Geological Survey's Water Cycle - one of the most complete explanation of the cycle
46. Water Cycle - Excellent resource.
47. Water Science - US Geological Survey's (USGS) Water Science for Schools web site! They offer information on many aspects of water, along with pictures, data, maps, and an interactive center where you can give opinions and test your water knowledge.
48. WaterWatch - Current water resources conditions - Map of real-time stream flow compared to historical stream flow for the day of the year (United States)
49. Weather & Climate sites
    1. Ask the Weather Dude has several quizzes for you to test your weather knowledge.
    2. Atmospheric Pressure - the force exerted by the weight of air
    3. Centre for Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Cambridge
    4. Classroom Activities which introduce a variety of fundamental topics in meteorology
    5. Climate and Weather Unit - In this lesson, students become familiar with weather terminology and different representations of data as they explore various on-line weather sites. They will be given an opportunity to practice using and interpreting data, while determining the effects of the time of day, time of year, as well as on temperature.
    6. Climographs
       1. How to Read a Climograph - Every place on Earth has weather. However, different places on Earth have different types of "typical" weather. A quick way to get an idea of the climate of a particular place is to look at a "climate-graph," or "climograph."
       2. Climographs of Selected U.S. Cities - A climograph plots monthly average temperature and precipitation for some location. It provides a quick way of characterizing the climate of a particular place. To view a climograph for one of the U.S. cities listed, click on the city name or the corresponding dot on the map.
       3. Climate Information - a source of raw data that your students might use to make their own climograph
       4. Interactive Climate Map - Move your cursor over a rectangle to see a climograph. Click on the rectangle to view information about the climate at that location
       5. Koppen's Climate Classification - Click on a blue "x" to see the climograph for that location
       6. U.S. Climate at a Glance - from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina
       7. United States Climate Page - (Click on state of interest, then select a city to see a climograph)
       8. World Climate - What the weather is normally like for tens of thousands of places worldwide! WorldClimate.com contains over 85,000 records of world climate data (historical weather averages)
    7. Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    8. The Earth-Atmosphere-Sun System and Surface Temperature - using a global energy balance model to calculate mean global surface temperature.
    9. Earth Temperature Up or Down? - How could the globe be warming and not warming at the same time?
    10. Franklin's Forecast , an online exploration of weather technologies.
    11. Global Cloud Cover - near real-time data, data is also available for global water vapor
    12. Hottest Temperature on Earth see also the Coldest Temperature on Earth
    13. Hurricanes
        1. Hurricane Archive - Detailed tracking charts and info for all Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1886 at Weather Underground
        2. Hurricane Center - lets you keep track of current tropical storms or get information about past storms.
        3. Hurricanes: Nature's Fury - from National Geographic
    14. Interactive Weather Information Network - By the National Weather Service. The others are just playing at weather, this site has a tremendous amount of weather information about any site selected. See current weather conditions for Memphis , including hourly readings for the past 24 hours.
    15. Locating climate and weather data and information from the NOAA Climate Diagnostics Center
    16. The National Weather Service National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) - Graphical Forecasts - This map shows forecast temperatures for the US, normally updated every hour. This is an experimental product of the National Digital Forecast Database, produced by the National Weather Service. Play around with this site for a while, you will find a wealth of real time data here.
    17. Online Climate Data and Weather Observations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). You will find access to raw data which your students could use to complete a project. Links to satellite and radar are also provided from the page.
    18. Online Meteorology Guide - a collection of web-based instructional modules
    19. Reading Weather Maps - features to look for on weather maps to make a forecasts
    20. Storm Spotter's Guide is an illustrated guide to what types of features are often seen before and during severe weather events.
    21. Temperature World - temperature news, resources, and links
    22. Tornado Project Online gathers, compiles, and makes tornado information available to tornado and severe weather enthusiasts, the meteorological community
    23. Tornadoes , a close up view from USA Today's weather page.
    24. Tornadoes: Nature's Fury - from National Geographic
    25. USA Today Weather
    26. U S Radar Loop of the last 2 hours covering the contiguous United States. This Doppler radar site indicates clouds, rain and snow with different colors, and refreshes 4 times per hour. Intellicast now offers a 12 hour java loop . More importantly, this loop allows you to step forward, or backward, one image at a time.
    27. The Weather Channel
    28. The Weather Dude provides many weather links and discussion of topics. You can even find weather songs (you will need Real Audio).
    29. WeatherEye - Good resource for all grade levels. Lessons, activities, printouts and more.
    30. Weather Online's hundreds of weather tools on the web.
    31. What Forces Affect Out Weather? - A complete weather unit from Annenberg/CPB
    32. What's Up With the Weather? - from PBS
    33. WW2010 - the World Weather 2010 Project features online guides
    
    
    

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