This week’s 31 October 2009 Earth Science Sites of the Week feature the following resources: _____________________________________________________________________
Editor’s Picks: 1) Solar Conjunction of Jupiter and its Moons, 2) Environmental Chemistry PowerPoint, ***3) The Environment set to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” 4) Backwards Singing, 5) Pondering Questions.
Learn directions for a neat add on for Google Earth. You can fly to any place in the US, stop panning, wait 5 seconds (you can adjust the time lag), and a topo map automatically appears. There's a tutorial here detailing how to make your own layer and revealing all the various overlays (including ortho images) that are available.
Site Name
Weighing and Determining the Average Density of Earth
Here's a link to a lesson on rain shadows using clips from their Death Valley program. The lesson is complete with detailed instructions, student worksheets, maps, ESRT charts. optional google earth visualizations, pre-edited video clips, links to learning standards, and complete answer keys with content explanation for teachers. There's a lot of material there, and you'll really have to look the whole thing over carefully before doing it with a class - but it covers content regarding the orographic effect.
“Imagine looking up at noon and seeing a planet with four moons just 0.1ofrom the edge of the blinding sun. Impossible? NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft did it this week. Click on the image below to launch a movie of Jupiter and the Galilean satellites in close "solar conjunction." During the 30-hour movie, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto circle Jupiter as a massive CME billows overhead. STEREO-B recorded the action on March 15th and 16th using an occulting disk to block the solar glare. This arrangment allowed STEREO's cameras to photograph moons of Jupiter eight thousand billion (8x1012) times dim er than the adjacent sun.”
“The Galileoscope™ is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators. No matter where you live, with this easy-to-assemble, 50-mm (2-inch) diameter, 25- to 50-power achromatic refractor, you can see the celestial wonders that Galileo Galilei first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today. These include lunar craters and mountains, four moons circling Jupiter, the phases of Venus, Saturn's rings, and countless stars invisible to the unaided eye. The Galileoscope costs just US$15 each plus shipping for 1 to 99 units, or US$12.50 each plus shipping for 100 or more.”
An annotated PowerPoint presentation suitable for presentation as a general lecture to explain the basics of environmental chemistry to a general chemistry class or similar group can be downloaded from this site. This lecture emphasizes sustainability and covers environmental chemistry from the viewpoint of five environmental spheres: Hydrosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, biosphere, and anthrosphere. It also defines and explains green chemistry and the related area of industrial ecology. Other topics covered include toxicological chemistry and energy including the potential for use of biofuels. Additional slides on these topics are available free of charge by contacting the author,
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Analogies are not used very often on tests, but they can be very powerful when done correctly. The best analogies have a strong relationship between the known and the unknown. Students can also write their own analogies and you can use some of their work on your final exam. The site includes some of the basics of analogy writing. The examples at the end may be more helpful than some of the first slides which are primarily talking points. Login required
View a procedure on how to supercool water and get it to freeze instantly.
Site Name
Planetary Distances in the Hallway
Site Author
Charles Burrows
Contributor
Charles Burrows
Description
I would find the longest hallway in the school and make that the distance between the Sun and Neptune, placing all objects (planets and
Sun) at the correct scaled distance, using either 2-D or 3-D models, also show their sizes to the same scale. Have the kids figure out the numbers in advance.
“I know that it's easy to "print screen" on your PC, but sometimes you just want to capture a small piece of the screen. MWSnap is a freeware utility that allows you to select any part of the screen and automatically save it as a clipboard image that can be pasted into a ppt, an email, etc., or saved to your drive. I've been using it for years without a single problem (my recent moon and ecliptic post to this list contained 8 images that I clipped from Stellarium and dumped directly into my email). Saves you having to edit a complete screenshot in some other photo editing application.”
Quotes
Quote Author
Einstein.
Contributor
Mike Nolan
Description
"It's amazing that imagination can survive formal education."
“These YouTube videos are a little confusing at first. This guy sounds like he’s singing in slurred Russian. And he’s playing with various props. It’s all very strange. Can you guess what song he’s singing? How could you? It’s just gibberish, right? Well, at the halfway point everything changes.
It turns out he was singing in English. He was simply singing backwards. With the video reversed, you hear the actual song. That’s a very impressive, if strange, talent.”
Site Name
Joachim de Posada says, Don't eat the marshmallow yet
“In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.”
Site Name
Some Questions to Ponder
Contributor
Mike Markowski
Description
How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
What disease did cured ham actually have?
How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up like every two hours?
************************************************************ Mark Francek Professor of Geography Dow 285 Central Michigan University Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
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