Digital Library for Earth System Education
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Teaching Tip on 'American Field Guide: Relative Dating - Telling Time Using Fossils'
No full textI think that this activity was helpful and interesting to use, but I think the directions may have been a little unclear but i was still able to complete the activity correctly.
Teaching Tip on 'Down the Drain: How Much Water Do You Use?'
No full textMore on line games and contacts would have helped students to get in touch with students from all over the world
Teaching Tip on 'Discovering Plate Boundaries'
No full textEducators should do the exercise completely themselves to see where students might have problems. This will help lead an exciting lab. I wouldn't recommend your first run be in the classroom.
Comment on 'Applets for Atmospheric Science Education'
No full textThere appears to be several things wrong with the applet 'Explore the Planck Function'.
(1) the conversion between Kelvin and Fahrenheit is incorrect. For example, when 300K is shown, the temperature in Fahrenheit should be 80.33 degrees, but 46.9 degrees is shown.
(2) The ordinate is labeled 'Watt per unit area per micron' but should be labeled 'Watt per square meter per micron' so that the poor student will know the proper units. Perhaps not every student remembers that unit area in the MKS system is a square meter. Its always good to remind them.
(3) The title of this function is called 'Blackbody Flux', but flux or radiant flux is total radiated power in watts. The student is being shown how an object with a certain absolute temperature radiates over a spectrum of wavelengths, not just the total radiation. Radiant exitance is power radiated per area; more exactly, watts per square centimeter. Spectral exitance is Radiant exitance over a limited spectrum, usually 1 micron. Spectral exitance is radiated power in watts per square centimeter per micron. A more descriptive title, therefore, would be 'Blackbody Spectral Exitance'.
(4) Has the student had the concept of 'blackbody' explained to her?
(5) The function doesn't seem to generate proper spectral exitance. Here is Planck's Law for spectral exitance:
M(e) = c1/[lambda^5(exp(x)-1)]
where c1 = 3.74 x 10^4 watts um^4/sq centimeter
lambda = wavelength in um
x = c2/(lambda)(T)
c2 = 14388 umK
T = absolute temperature in K
The constants given are approximate. When I used t = 300K and lambda = 10um, the curve shown did not match my computed result exactly.
Reference: 'Fundamentals of Infrared Detector Operation and Testing' by John Vincent, Pub. John Wiley & Sons.
(6) Perhaps more insight could be gained by the student if temperature could be extended higher to show in more graphic terms how the peak exitance shifts to shorter wavelengths with increasing temperature.
Study a physics book before using the applet "Exploring the Planck Function'.
Teaching Tip on 'Vertical Cloud Profiles: The Millimeter Wave Cloud Radar (MMCR)'
No full textApart from the font on the activity being too small for easy reading, this resource is nicely formatted and simple/clean.
Teaching Tip on 'The Global Sun Temperature Project'
No full textMake adjustments for students with visual or perceptual difficulties. You might try highlighting information on the printouts. I used underlining. It was a good project for Special Ed. because it was very active. The students got to go outside and take their own measurements. You will have to come up with a reminder system for students with a short attention span or faulty memory. This was a good activity to work on organizational skills.
Teaching Tip on 'Down the Drain: How Much Water Do You Use?'
No full textThe only problem we had was that we had to reformat the spreadsheets that the students took home to gather data so that they would print on one page instead of two. This may have just been caused by a difference in computer platforms.
Teaching Tip on 'Musical Plates: A Study of Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics'
No full textThe Musical Plates program lends itself well to a Spiral Curriculum.
Information on challenging teaching and learning situations for 'How Volcanoes Work'
No full textThe resource being annotated is: http://www.dlese.org/dds/catalog_DLESE-000-000-001-035.htm
Comment on 'Virtual Earthquake'
No full textI think that the students should be able to browse through the questions once again before the answers are graded. Also, the students should be allowed to go back and revisit the problems they missed.