The purpose of this task is to help students interpret signed numbers in a context as a magnitude and a direction and to make sense of the absolute value of a signed number as its magnitude.

In this 6-part activity, students learn about climate change during the Cenozoic and the abrupt changes at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary (65.5 million years ago), the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (33.9 million years ago), and the Paleocene/Eocene boundary (55.8 million years ago).

In this activity, students work with paleoclimate proxy data (d18O, CH4, CO2)from the Byrd and GISP2 ice cores to investigate millennial-scale climate changes during the Last Glacial/Deglacial time periods. Students must prepare a publication quality plot of the data and answer several questions about the similarities and differences between the time-series (north-south phasing, amplitude, symmetry) and use this information to assess the bipolar see-saw mechanism for abrupt climate changes. Students are encouraged to read two journal articles for more information and to synthesize their results with other information from lectures and earlier readings.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

In this activity, students use the absorption spectra of greenhouse gases to explore the nature of the greenhouse effect.

Using students' step length to understand the relationship between distance, speed and acceleration. Includes graphing of data and interpretation of graphs.

Students make a wheel and axle out of cardboard and a wooden dowel. It is rooled along a ramp made of parallel meter sticks, and the acceleration can be made small enough to make accurate measurements and calculations.

Students work in groups to examine excerpts from primary source documents. They identify social and economic factors affecting specific categories of people when the Great Migration accelerated in 1916 to 1917: black migrant workers from the South, southern planters, southern small-farm farmers, northern industrialists, agents, and white immigrant workers in the North. Each student group creates a "perspectives page" to post for a gallery walk where students analyze the causes of the Great Migration and the changes it brought to both the North and South. Students also discuss the specific economic factors that influenced the Great Migration: scarcity, supply, demand, surplus, shortage, and opportunity cost. Using the PACED decisionmaking model, they analyze the alternatives and criteria of potential migrants.

Students work as physicists to understand centripetal acceleration concepts. They also learn about a good robot design and the accelerometer sensor. They also learn about the relationship between centripetal acceleration and centripetal force governed by the radius between the motor and accelerometer and the amount of mass at the end of the robot's arm. Students graph and analyze data collected from an accelerometer, and learn to design robots with proper weight distribution across the robot for their robotic arms. Upon using a data logging program, they view their own data collected during the activity. By activity end , students understand how a change in radius or mass can affect the data obtained from the accelerometer through the plots generated from the data logging program. More specifically, students learn about the accuracy and precision of the accelerometer measurements from numerous trials.

This activity guides students through the evaluation of a website that they have created to see if it is accessible for users with disabilities. Students will simulate a number of different disabilities (e.g. visual impairments, color blindness, auditory impairments, motor impairments) to see if their website is accessible; they will also use automated W3 and WAVE tools to evaluate their sites. Students will consider the needs of users with disabilities by creating a persona and scenario of a user with disabilities interacting with their site. Finally, students will write up recommendations to change their site and implement the changes.

Comments
Although this activity can be used in isolation, it is intended to be part of a series guiding students towards the creation of a front-end of a website. The series (all published as OER) consist of:

a) Needfinding
b) Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards
c) Front-end Website Design and Development
d) Accessibility Evaluation

This is a computer-based activity in which students retrieve data from websites maintained by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Weather Service (NWS), and then use that data to test different hypotheses regarding streamflow and precipitation. Students import data from web sites into a spreadsheet program where they can construct scatter plots and perform simple statistical tests. The activity has two components, the first focusing on relations between streamflow and drainage basin characteristics (drainage area, slope, precipitation), the second focusing on trends in annual precipitation at two locations in the USA: Burlington, VT, and Boulder, CO. As part of the second component, students conduct a statistical test to determine if the long-term trends in precipitation are significant.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Students form literature circles, read "Esperanza Rising" or "Becoming Naomi Leon" by Pam MuĐoz Ryan, use a Critical Thinking Map to discuss social issues, and use a class wiki.

This module examines the nature and variability of subduction margins through examination of data sets that document subduction zone inputs, deformation, and resulting morphology in different settings.

This jigsaw style exercise challenges new geomorphology students to collect topographic data and analyze its accuracy and precision.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

In this lab exercise, students practice correctly using measurement tools, recording data, calculating density, using significant figures, and exploring the concepts of accuracy and precision.

This task examines, from a mathematical and statistical point of view, how scientists measure the age of organic materials by measuring the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12. The focus here is on the statistical nature of such dating. This task addresses a very important issue about precision in reporting and understanding statements in a realistic scientific context.

This task is a refinement of ``Carbon 14 dating'' which focuses on accuracy. Because radioactive decay is an atomic process modeled by the laws of quantum mechanics, it is not possible to know with certainty when half of a given quantity of Carbon 14 atoms will decay. This type of question is very important in science and it also provides an opportunity to study the very subtle question of how errors behave when applying a function: in some cases the errors can be magnified while in others they are lessened.

This problem involves solving a system of algebraic equations from a context: depending how the problem is interpreted, there may be one equation or two.

This task is a somewhat more complicated version of "Accurately weighing pennies I'' as a third equation is needed in order to solve part (a) explicitly. Instead, students have to combine the algebraic techniques with some additional problem-solving (numerical reasoning, informed guess-and-check, etc.)

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students estimate travel times and costs of a driving/camping trip to visit national parks in Colorado.