EarthScope and its partners have developed activities, lesson plans, map tools, visualizations – and much more – to help students and teachers work with EarthScope data and science results. Free EarthScope materials include teachable moments, research summaries, links to research projects, and interactions with EarthScope scientists and staff.
Thematic Working Groups
TWG Structures and Tasks Complete TWG Member List TWG Online Community
External Map Resources
USGS Digital State Geologic Maps
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Visualizations
Many research facilities are using EarthScope instrument data to produce scientific models and visual representations.
SIO Visualization Center
EarthScope Voyager, Jr.
UC Davis KeckCAVES
"Fun With Plate Tectonics" - EarthScope at the Science and Engineering Expo, October 2010
More than 500,000 people of all ages attended the first USA Science and Engineering Festival on Washington, DC's National Mall on October 23 and 24, 2010. As one of 15 NSF exhibits (and of more than 550 organizations overall), EarthScope presented hands-on activities to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. A steady stream of enthusiastic explorers kept the EarthScope booth, staffed by members from the EarthScope National Office, UNAVCO, and volunteers from James Madison University, buzzing throughout the festival. Activities using Gumdrop GPS stations, blocks of sandpaper-covered wood, and puzzles of the major tectonic plates demonstrated concepts and research in plate tectonics, earthquake faulting and geodesy (the science of measuring the size and shape if the Earth and the movement of points on its surface). Actual GPS data were used to answer questions about how Washington DC is moving with respect to Europe. Lithospheric rebound demonstrated using flubber (visit the Polenet for a video) proved to be a highly popular hands-on activity particularly with the younger crowd.
Within a broader context, the EarthScope booth participated in the "Dynamic Earth" track that explored landscape evolution, earthquakes, plate motions, climate change, and rocks and minerals. The IRIS consortium with their "Make an Earthquake" activity also participated in the "Dynamic Earth" track. An AGU booth about weather and climate was part of the "Weatherfest" track. A completed track, which meant visiting and collecting stamps from 10 exhibits of a track, could be used, for example, towards a Girl or Boy Scout merit badge.
Images courtesy of Shelley Olds, UNAVCO:
Isostatic rebound, hands on!
Gumdrop GPS sites reveal plate motions!
Interested in plate motions.
GPS measurements illustrate plate motions (from UNAVCO's geon web site.)