NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database

Environmental hazards — such as wildfire, flood, and drought — are increasingly affecting communities in Colorado. With this rise in hazardous events, there is a pressing need for communities to become more resilient through education, preparation, and planning. The Hazard Education, Awareness, and Resilience Task Force (HEART Force) lessons and education resources engage rural Colorado middle and high school students, teachers, and communities to take proactive steps in preparing for and responding to natural hazards.

This is a 2D demonstration of how a photon — a small bundle of light energy — might move in its journey from the interior to the surface of the sun. Creative educators might modify this into a game for several players that includes questions about the sun as levels are reached, etc. Be imaginative!

Hurricane Resilience is a high school environmental science curriculum for use in coastal locations where hurricanes are common. The curriculum unit aims to empower high school students to have a voice in resilience planning and help them understand the relationship between the science of hurricanes and the local impacts of these storms on people and places.

The activities in this collection are based on the principle that real-time environmental data is a valuable tool for providing students with opportunities for self-directed exploration of the natural world. Students engaging in these activities will gain a deeper understanding of carbon cycling, ocean acidification, and other phenomena related to climate change. These activities are designed with the three-dimensional approach to teaching in mind (e.g. NGSS-aligned), and also use a data literacy framework to help guide students through data orientation, interpretation, and synthesis.

In this activity, we will let solar radiation raise the temperature of a measured quantity of water. From the observation of how much time is required for the temperature change, we can calculate the amount of energy absorbed by the water and then relate this to the energy output of the sun.

One of the keys to learning about the Sun is to view it in different wavelengths of light. The views can be quite different, and so are views of objects on Earth in different wavelengths. This activity examines objects through a filter set of colored and specialized filters and illustrates how science uses different wavelengths to selectively study features of the Sun.

A collection of lessons, videos, podcasts, and audio clips on sustainability, seafood, sea turtles, marine mammals, ecosystems and more, which use NOAA remote sensing data. Students use Earth imagery to explain the movement of animals that are tracked by satellite with NOAA's ARGOS monitoring system.

Explore more about the different sea turtle species.

Solar Physics and Terrestrial Effects is a resource consisting of three main parts: a short textbook, a hands-on activity guide, and resource listings. The textbook should provide the necessary background in solar physics for teachers. The activity section offers ideas for hands-on experiences that can be done in the classroom, using materials that are cheap and easily available. Background information is available in the text for the activities. Any materials that are needed for activities can be obtained from a variety of sources.

To monitor changes in the earth’s magnetic field and relate these changes to solar events such as flares. Many variations of this design are in use by amateurs because of its simplicity, but now with the availability of inexpensive and sensitive Hall-effect sensors that easily interface to home computers, it should be possible to make more quantitative measurements of changes in the geomagnetic field due to solar wind. By monitoring changes in the geomagnetic field, aurorae and related effects can be forecast and studied.