Plate Tectonic Movement Visualizations
This collection provides a wide array of visual resources and supporting material about plate tectonic movements. Visualizations include simple animations, GIS-based animated maps, paleogeographic maps and globes, and numerous illustrations and photos. This collection is not exhaustive but does represent some of the best sources for teaching. Resources can be incorporated into lectures, labs, or other activities.
Glacial Landforms Resulting from Erosion and Deposition
This site provides visual resources and supporting material about how glaciers modify the landscape. Animations and movies illustrate both depositional and erosional landforms such as moraines, outwash plains, U-shaped valleys, cirques, and hanging waterfalls. These resources may be incorporated into lectures, labs, and other activities.
Chemical Weathering
This site provides visual resources that illustrate the process of chemical weathering. Animations demonstrate how temperature and precipitation affect the evolution of parent material from highly resistant primary minerals to both secondary minerals and minerals in solution, as well as showing rates of weathering of various common minerals. A collection of photographs gives examples of chemical weathering in both natural outcrops and constructed features such as tombstones and carvings. These r
Crystal Growth Movies
This site, maintained by the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming, contains four QuickTime videos of actual crystal growth. To access the videos, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on any of the downloads that are available. These videos enhance understanding of the processes involved in crystallization.
Observe River Erosion Creating Waterfalls and Chasms
This animation illustrates the processes involved in waterfall formation. Related features such as chasms and plunge pools, as well as headward erosion and migration are also portrayed. Users can stop, play, fast forward and rewind the animation at any time. This visualization is one of several animations in a series developed as a component of Exploring Earth, a website that supports the textbook Earth Science.
Animation Showing Growth of a Continent
This Flash animation illustrates continental growth. It shows a convergent boundary where a terrane on a subducting plate is fused to the edge of a continent. Users can stop, play, fast forward and rewind the animation at any time. This visualization is one of several animations in a series developed as a component of Exploring Earth, a website that supports the textbook Earth Science.
Graphical Representation of Geologic Time
This spiral graph visualization, which includes both marine and terrestrial components, represents 4.5 billion years of geologic time. Stratigraphy, paleontology, and geochronology study results provide evidence in support of this old earth. This graphical representation is from an article called Age of the Earth.
CLT: Exploring Climate Events and Human Development
This animation on the Climate TimeLine (CTL) site depicts changes in land cover due to land use over the past 100 years. Data is based on census data, tax records, land surveys, and historical geography estimates. This visualization is the work of the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM, Netherlands) and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE, USA).
Why Topography?
Part of the supporting resources for the School of Earth Sciences dynamic earth module, the -Why Topography?- site discusses two models introduced in the 19th century that are still used to explain topographic variations. These models are the Pratt and Airy models of isostasy. In the Pratt model, high topography (relative to surroundings) is due to lower density whereas in the Airy model, high topography is due to thick crust.
Impact of the Seasons on Earth Systems
This site features Flash animations that illustrate how seasons impact various Earth systems, including surface temperature, latent heat flux, air temperature, net radiation, precipitation, runoff, and soil moisture. These resources are suitable for use in lectures, labs, or other teaching activities.
Geochemistry Activities
This site from the "On the Cutting Edge" workshop series contains a collection of activities that can be used in undergraduate geochemistry courses. The collection includes lab exercises, classroom activities, problem sets and more.
Teaching Mineralogy: A Digital Collection of Teaching Materials
This site from the "On the Cutting Edge" workshop series features a collection of resources for teaching mineralogy at the undergraduate level. These digital teaching materials are designed for faculty to use while designing new courses, enhancing existing courses, or simply looking for new ideas in teaching mineralogy. Students will also find this collection helpful for finding supplemental study materials and for doing research projects in mineralogy.
Teaching Hydrogeology in the 21st Century
This site from the "The On the Cutting Edge" workshop series features a wealth of ideas, teaching examples and web-based resources that are useful for teaching undergraduate hydrogeology.
Solar System Animations
This site features Flash animations that illustrate phases of the moon, distances between planets, total, partial, and annular eclipses, and solar system formation that includes an example of the impact that created the moon. These resources are suitable for use in lectures, labs, or other teaching activities.
Igneous Rocks for Undergraduate Courses
This site contains photographs of 22 igneous rock hand samples. Clicking on an image brings up a larger view of the sample. In addition, links to thin sections are available for some of the samples. Thin sections can be seen in both crossed polarized light and plane polarized light by moving the cursor on and off the photomicrograph. This resource is part of the Teaching Petrology collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/petrology03/index.html
Tonto National Monument: Saving a National Treasure
tells the story of the Salado people, who thrived in the Arizona valley where Tonto Creek joins the Salt River (1050-1450 AD). The Salado culture combined customs of several American Indian groups. They channeled the river to create farmland in the desert. They built Pueblo-style buildings. They left no written records. This monument, established in December 1907, was among the first sites protected under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Paterson, New Jersey: America's Silk City
examines conditions that led to the famous 1913 strike in a city that produced nearly half the U.S.'s manufactured silk. Conflicts between labor and management increased in the U.S. during the early 20th century. In Paterson, on January 27, 1913, when Henry Doherty tried to extend a new four-loom system throughout his plant, 800 silk weavers walked out. More than 20,000 Paterson silk workers took part in the strike, which lasted over five months.
History & Culture
offers educators Park Service resources that help teach about our nation's cultural heritage, and which look at how the NPS is protecting and preserving them. Subjects include archaeology, historic buildings and structures, mapping, military history, and national historic landmarks. The resources may be in the form of learning programs, case studies, lesson plans, teachers' handbooks, and more.
Lexington, Kentucky: The Athens of the West
highlights 29 places that illustrate the transformation of the city from a small frontier post during the Revolutionary War into a center of economic, intellectual, and political activity. Photos, maps, and essays are included.
The United States Air Force Academy: Founding a Proud Tradition
recounts the history of aviation and the military: aviation's entry into the military during World War I, Germany's use of air power early in World War II, Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Airlift, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and President Eisenhower's declaration that our first line of defense would be an air atomic strike force. The site examines the design of the Air Force Academy, authorized in 1954 after 30 years of struggle.
