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High-Adventure Science project makes significant impact

With renewed attention to global environmental challenges, understanding how Earth’s systems work is essential to both thinking about those challenges and finding potential solutions. Teaching about human interactions with Earth systems requires that students apply relevant science concepts to these challenges. For example, students should understand the water cycle when exploring freshwater distribution, the atmospheric […]

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The repeal of the Clean Power Plan and how to teach about energy choices and climate change

The Clean Power Plan, which sets state-by-state targets for carbon emissions reductions, has been called a climate game changer, but the director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has repealed the plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Over the last several decades there has been an increasing awareness of the ways […]

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Earth Educators’ Rendezvous

Last month, I attended the Earth Educators’ Rendezvous in Albuquerque where I participated in the Geoscience Education Research and Practice Forum. Approximately 40 geoscience educators and researchers gathered for four days to prioritize grand challenges in geoscience education research and recommend strategies for addressing the priorities. Both in small working groups and large group feedback […]

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Hitting the Wall

Gas laws are generally taught in high school chemistry. Students learn that Boyle’s law, for instance, can be expressed as P1V1=P2V2, where P is pressure and V is volume. From the equation, it’s clear that there is an inverse relationship between the gas pressure and volume, but do students understand the molecular mechanism behind this […]

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