Just Passing Through
The purpose of this resource is to develop an understanding of some of the relationships between soils of different types and water. Students will time the flow of water through soils with different properties and measure the amount of water held in these soils. They will also experiment with the filtering ability of soils by testing the pH of the water before and after it passes through the soil and observing changes to the clarity of the water and to the characteristics of the soil. Students w
Site Seeing Beginning Level
The purpose of this resource is to investigate the center pixel of a homogeneous land Cover Site in order to understand that individual land areas are part of a larger land system.
Odyssey of the Eyes Beginning Level
The purpose of this resource is to familiarize students with the importance of perspective and various scales of remotely sensed data. Students create a 3-D model of an area and develop a classification system for the landforms in their model. The maps can then be used to answer certain questions about the environment.
Leaf Classification
The purpose of this resource is to develop a classification system for a set of objects and learn about hierarchical classification systems. Any set of objects, such as insects or rocks, may be used as well.
Bird Beak Accuracy Assessment
The purpose of this resource is to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of a classification system. Students sort birds into three possible classes based on each bird's beak: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Students compare their answers with a given set of validation data.
Microscope Imaging Station
This site shows what blood is, what happens when the immune system goes awry, what are stem cells are, and more. See videos exploring cell structure and function, cell development and motility, plankton, plants, and protozoa. Learn how the sea urchin helps us understand genes, reproduction, and cancer.
Earth's history in 4.56 meters: constructing a timeline with calculator tape
In this short activity, students make a timeline of Earth's history using calculator tape. The tape is 4.56 meters long, so that one billion years is equal to one meter. This exercise is designed to introduce students to the scale of Earth's history and help them gain a familiarity with some major events. It also teaches about scaling, the metric system, as well as the concepts of large numbers and deep time. The activity may be used in an introductory geoscience course. Learning goals, context
FishBase
This webpage presents the searchable section of FishBase, a global information system with all you ever wanted to know about fishes. FishBase is a relational database with information that may be useful to professionals such as research scientists, fishery managers or zoologists. The site has pictures and information on more than 28500 species of fish.
Radioactive Decay and Geochronology
This activity was developed to introduce upper level undergraduate students to dynamical systems modeling. In this exercise, students create a STELLA model of the radioactive decay process. They then learn how the special radioactive series 238U - 206Pb and 237U - 205Pb can be used to determine both the time when a rock initially crystallized and when it underwent a recrystallization, even when the sample being dated was not a closed system. Learning goals, context for use, teaching tips, materi
Scaling Galileo's Solar System - Locating the Globes
In this activity students plot the position of model planets on a campus map by converting from polar coordinates to Cartesian coordinates, after calculating the planet positions from scaled orbits and periods. They recreate spreadsheets, shown in a Powerpoint module, with formulas that answer various pieces of the overall question. This module is the fourth in a series of four on the Galilean Solar System, and was designed for an undergraduate class where students look at geological questions m
Lake Level Changes in the Arid West
In this lab, students use STELLA modeling software to see what combinations of runoff and evaporation might have led to Pleistocene lake level oscillations. This exercise is designed to explore the impact of changes in climate on the level of lakes in the Owens River system, but it can be adapted to other areas. Learning goals, context for use, teaching tips, materials, assessment tips and related resources are provided.
Ground Water Atlas of the United States: Idaho, Oregon, Washington
This website contains a complete hydro-geologic summary of the Columbia Plateau Regional Aquifer System. The summary includes thirteen maps and figures that are accompanied by text descriptions. All texts and figures are available for download.
Methods and algorithms for system design
System design is the central topic of this course. We move beyond the methods developed in circuit design (although we shall have interest in those) and consider situations in which the functional behavior of a system is the first object under consideration.
System Identification and Parameter Estimation
This course is about non-parametric system identification based on estimators of spectral densities and its application to open-loop and closed-loop systems. Furthermore parameter estimation for linear and non-linear systems plays an important role.
Water management in Urban Areas
Master course on design and planning of the urban water management system. It deals with fluxes and processes in water and soil. Furthermore, aspects of water management policy development are discussed.
Federal Court Concepts
This module, "Federal Court Concepts", is designed to introduce secondary and postsecondary students to the American federal court system. It contains basic information about the structure of the federal courts, what kind of cases that federal courts hear, and how to use federal court decisions in research.
Thermoregulation in Vertebrates Studied by Telemetry
This exercise, which is adaptable for introductory biology students or advanced physiology classes, uses a simple radio telemetry system for measuring body temperature from unrestrained and undisturbed animals. The advantages of this system over traditional probe-type thermometers are enormous. The laboratory will include practice in calibration of the transmitters, instruction in inserting the transmitter into the animals, and experience in interpreting the data obtained.
How Did the Oceans Form?
This online article is from the Museum's Seminars on Science, a series of distance-learning courses that allow educators to discuss scientific ideas and classroom applications with AMNH scientists and educators. "How Did the Oceans Form?" is part of The Ocean System course. It includes a set of related ...
What Is Water?
This online article is from the Museum's Seminars on Science, a series of distance-learning courses that allow educators to discuss scientific ideas and classroom applications with AMNH scientists and educators. "What Is Water?" is part of The Ocean System course.
Image Gallery: Mangroves
This image gallery is from the Museum's Seminars on Science, a series of distance-learning courses that allow educators to discuss scientific ideas and classroom applications with AMNH scientists and educators. The gallery is part of The Ocean System course and was designed to accompany the "Mangroves: ...
