Exploring Our Fluid Earth

Hi Friends,

"Structure and Function - Fish" is too long. In my class we break it up at the part where the Lateral Line section starts but I could imagine breaking this into at least 3 more focused readings. This reading is a little too intimidating for some of my students otherwise... You'd be amazed at how many of our kids are on the fence any given day about whether school is "too hard" or not. And there are too many overwhelmed teachers out there teaching this course as a second prep who can find themselves accidentally assigning more work than they realize they have.

1.2(B) is labeled as including sea ice, but 1.2(C) appears to have more ice.

I'm wondering how/where to find the teacher's guide for this and other activities.

is it possible to get the answer for solubility activity

Is there any way to have any access to the data that has been collected on the jellyfish in the lake in Palau?

Researchers are probing the depths (2.8km) of Earth's crust and finding bacteria living in the sulfate-rich waters.

https://www.the-scientist.com/features/life-thrives-within-the-earths-c…

If you type into google, "distance from Sendai Japan to a specific city," a number of free resources come up. For example, Google maps give you 8,015km between Sendai and San Francisco, CA.

Other sources:
http://disween.com/ = 8,030km

You can use plastic drink cups as alternatives to the zip-top sandwich bags. Plastic cups are easier to pour and scoop, but they are less similar to expandable throat pouches of "gulper" rorqual mysticete whales.

You can quickly clean/reset stations between groups by pouring water through basket strainers or window screening mesh. Discard wet paper hole-punches and restart.

These adult Atlantic spotted dolphins are approximately 2.25 meters long. Teachers can project this image at actual size using the 1-meter scale bar (e.g. the projected yellow bar should equal the length of a meter stick held against the screen).

This adult male sperm whale is approximately 15 meters long.

To get the best results, position the camera between the 2 laser points. The camera can be behind the meter stick.

This activity is based on a method used by field biologists called paired-laser photogrammetry. It’s used to remotely estimate the body size of free-ranging animals that would be difficult or impossible to measure directly. For simplicity, this activity ignores potential parallax or image distortion errors (discussed in references above).

Teachers can use their own images. Teachers need to have a good idea of how big the whale is so that s/he can calculate the screen ratio for students. Recommend to look up the average size of adults of that species. This activity can also measure lengths on a computer screen or smartphone screen.

Puncture risk if glass thermometer breaks. Home body temperature thermometers from local drugstores could work. Cheap ~$5 each. However, most only go 32-43 deg C though and many are Fahrenheit only in the US. Kitchen meat thermometers could also work. Analog models are cheap at commercial restaurant supply stores. But they can be difficult to read (and quickly at 10 s intervals). Digital meat thermometers are $10-25 range in online retail stores.

The technicians should put on a pair of exam gloves when working with the vegetable shortening. Better to administer pre-weighed 125 g portions of vegetable shortening (inside identical plastic “Bag #1” bags). Smear vegetable shortening generously and evenly over the researcher’s hand, particularly over the region of the thermometer tip.

I'm wondering how/where to find the teacher's guide for this and other activities.

Diagram credit: NOAA

Look up some local bird species to help students with the first column in Table 5.8.

Give students instructions on how to fold foil to make little square pockets to cover the thermometer. This activity works the best on clear sunny days!