The need for geoscience students to develop a quantitative skillset is ever increasing. However, this can be difficult to implement in university-style lecture courses in a way that is both manageable for the instructor and does not involve lengthy, potentially repetitive, question sheets for the students. Here, a method for teaching dimensional…

This study aimed to examine teachers' satisfaction with and needs for earth science model experiments science textbooks used in primary schools. To this end, 103 primary school teachers participated in an online survey, and five teachers with doctorates in science education theory were interviewed. The findings of the study were as follows. First,…

The anomalous thermal expansion of water in the 0 °C-4 °C range is extremely important to life on Earth, but it is normally not presented experimentally in educational settings. This paper presents a simple experiment to explore the anomalous thermal expansion of water in the 0 °C-4 °C range and the heat exchange processes in natural bodies of…

In this paper, we present a physical modeling activity whose objective is to allow students to determine the differences between a disk and a sphere using pure scientific criteria. Thereunto, we reproduce the Sun-Earth-Moon system with low-cost materials and compare the illumination effects on the Moon considering two possible shapes for it (a…

In this work, the first experiment ever done to determine the age of the Earth is revisited. The benefits of its application at primary and secondary school levels are presented and discussed. In particular, emphasis is placed on the advantage of facing students with the challenges that scientists have had to overcome during the past three…

In a series of 12 project-based learning lessons, a group of seven fifth-grade students who live 200 miles from the coast explored their personal connections to the ocean. After completing a unit on the role of water in Earth's surface processes, the students investigated ocean acidification and how this pervasive ocean problem impacts their local…

Learning how cave formations, such as dripstone, take shape can be a valuable pedagogical tool in chemistry and geochemistry. Grasping the underlying processes requires students to synthesize knowledge of several different topical areas. The activity presented here uses an innovative experiment to connect chemistry concepts with an interesting…

The ability to accurately reason using three-dimensional visualizations is vital to success in STEM disciplines, particularly the geosciences. One impediment to learning from visualizations is spatially-based misconceptions. Such errors can arise from a range of sources (e.g., prior beliefs, inaccurate application of analogy, and visual…

Tomlinson's explanation of Artful Teaching and her 2017 expansion of this concept The Five Key Elements of Differentiation provide the theoretical framework of this examination of the need for science investigations in elementary schools. The Artful Teaching framework uses an equilateral triangle with vertices labeled The Teacher, The Student, and…

The characteristics of the inner layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, are determinant for Earth's life. In this experience we explore the first hundreds of meters using a smartphone mounted on a quadcopter. Both the altitude and the pressure are obtained using the smartphone's sensors. We complement these measures with data collected from the…

In the school year 2012-2013 about 50 students (Fig. 1), managed by mentors (teachers from the middle school Gimnazija Vic in Ljubljana, Slovenia) created an atmospheric probe and launched it into an altitude of more than 30 km above Earth's surface. The aim of this "space expedition" was to take pictures of Earth and to measure how air…

Twenty-two hundred years ago, the Greek scientist Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth. This paper describes an experiment to replicate Eratosthenes' experiment with observers located in Australia and New Zealand. The most accurate circumference produced in the experiment described in this paper is 38,874?km, measured at Rosebud,…

Earth's surface is constantly changing. Weathering, erosion, and deposition break down Earth materials, transport those materials, and place them in new locations. Children see evidence of these processes all around them. The sidewalk or playground surface cracks and has plants growing in it. Pieces of a rock wall or the sides of a building…

I describe how to obtain a rather good experimental determination of the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, as well as the obliquity of the Earth's rotation axis, by measuring, over the course of a year, the elevation of the Sun as a function of time during a day. With a very simple "instrument" consisting of an elementary sundial, first-year…

The ocean is home to some of Earth's most important producers. Single-celled organisms in the ocean are responsible for more than half of Earth's productivity, as well as most of its oxygen. Phytoplankton are single-celled, plantlike organisms. That is, they have chloroplasts and perform photosynthesis, but are not true plants, which are typically…