This lesson investigates the effects of different insulators (fur and blubber) on maintaining the body temperature of polar animals. Water balloons filled with warm water simulate the marine mammal. The blubber insulator will be simulated by covering the balloon in vegetable shortening. The fur insulator will be simulated by placing another balloon over the “marine mammal” and adding an air layer (blowing it up).
There are two options for this lesson, regular and advanced.
After spending 5 weeks in the Arctic learning about tundra vegetation and phenology, Alejandra Martinez wanted to have her students observe the growth of plants in their school. In this lesson, students will grow plants in multiple locations and track their growth to compare their phenology.
For this activity, the students are going to draw on their own knowledge and experience with weather to predict the current temperatures around the world and then compare their predictions with real-time weather data from selected locations around the world. The students will then be provided with several factors that affect both daily changes in temperature and climatological temperature and develop a hypothesis regarding how and why they think these factors and geographic location affect temperature and climate.
As science and technology continue to advance, the ways in which scientists and engineers study the surface of the Earth and how it will change in the future, changes along with it. The field of climate change science is continuing to benefit as advances in technology lead to a greater understanding of how climate changed in the past and create new ways to generate more high-resolution data sets of current Earth systems.
