Earth and Space Sciences
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Do not disturb
Students will explore the immediate and long-term effects of specific environmental disturbances, including how energy enters or leaves an ecosystem, how the biotic and abiotic characteristics of the ecosystem change and how organisms evolve under the new conditions.
- Life
Stories in rock
In this activity, students will research important fossil sites across the world and synthesize what they find into a story to present to the class.
- Chemistry
How are elements created?
Students will explore how elements are created — in nature and in the lab — while focusing on the concepts of atomic structure, stability and stellar evolution.
- Astronomy
Stellar smashup creates elements
Students will answer questions based on the Science News article “Strontium found in neutron star crash.”
- Earth
Unbalancing the carbon cycle
This activity covers where carbon is stored in the Earth, how carbon moves through Earth’s various spheres and how humans are impacting that carbon flow.
- Science & Society
A Nobel timeline in tweets
Students will track the scientific progress associated with a discovery or advance that was awarded a Nobel Prize by creating a timeline of key events and players.
- Science & Society
And the Nobel science prizes go to…
Students will answer questions based on the Science News article “Nobel Prize winners announced.”
- Chemistry
Fungi are the next green chemistry champs
Students will answer questions based on the Science News article “The next champs of green chemistry.”
- Earth
Career share and compare
These discussion prompts encourage students to discuss and compare the work and background of two SN 10 scientists to explore the varied paths to becoming a successful researcher.
- Earth
Dissect a scientific argument
These discussion prompts ask students to evaluate a scientific argument using the claim, evidence, reasoning model.
- Climate
Fungal threats on the rise?
Students will answer questions based on the Science News article “Climate change may raise the risk of deadly fungal infections in humans. One species is already a threat.”
- Earth
Eyes across the globe
Students will learn about three global monitoring networks and the types of scientific data collected by each. Additional prompts encourage students to consider the purpose of these networks.
