Math-Sci-Guy

This bundle contains most of the materials I use to teach an Astronomy unit near the start of 9th/10th grade Earth Science. It contains notes, labs, activities, handouts, quizzes, and review. Most answer keys are included at the end of each handout/notes/worksheet/quiz. Documents included in this bundle: Altitude of Polaris Astronomy Project Constellation Project Deep Space Worksheet Eccentricity and Planet Motion Ellipses Worksheet Graphing Galaxies Activity How Big Is Our Sun Worksheet HR Diag

This laboratory activity is about streams and erosion. It lets students watch erosion happen, deltas form, etc, and gives them experience trying to fight erosion. You will need stream tables, sand, buckets, etc to run this lab. This is one of the labs that I find my students have the most fun with. And honestly, the best lesson comes when some groups finish early and I tell them to try building dams and see how long they can stop the stream for. It usually only takes about a minute before som

Enjoy this laboratory activity about Latitude and Longitude! It gives students practice reading and using the latitude & longitude coordinate system on various maps. Specific skills practiced are reading locations on a map, plotting locations on a map, contemplating time zones and how they relate to Earth's rotation and solar noon vs clock noon. Note: Parts of the lab refer to the ESRT. This is New York State's Earth Science Reference Tables. Even if you don't teach in New York State, the

This laboratory activity is about watersheds in New York State and the USA. It lets students explore some major watersheds and gives them experience noting specific features. Most of these pictures are created as shapes in MS Word, so they do not get grainy when printed. Note: Parts of the lab refer to the ESRT. This is New York State's Earth Science Reference Tables. Even if you don't teach in New York State, they are a fantastic resource (both of information and to help students practice findi

This is a simple, interdisciplinary worksheet for science or math students. It walks students through the steps of figuring out how many times bigger the sun is compared to the earth (by diameter, and then by volume). The first page of the document is the worksheet; the second page is the answer key. Primarily written for an Earth Science or Astronomy class, but can be useful in a Math class, too. The math involves substituting numbers into an equation and simplifying (cubing, multiplication,

This laboratory activity gives students practice reading and working with topographic maps. They will also be drawing profile diagrams for each of the maps they use. Some of the questions are designed to force students to research symbols that they will find on maps.

Students graph distances to various galaxies vs their speeds, and infer a direct relationship between the two. Skills Practiced: graphing, reviewing the main graph types, applying math concepts to real life

This activity guides students in studying how spherical the earth is. I would use this after students have already learned the term "oblate sphereoid," so that you can then use this to discuss with them How oblate is it? Students will do some simple calculations (basic ratios) to discover the relief that the highest and lowest elevations on Earth would have if the earth were shrunk down to the size of a (32cm diameter) classroom globe.

This laboratory activity about Earthquake Depths is a great math-science crossover! It gives students practice with latitude & longitude and helps them process the fact that earthquakes don't just happen at Earth's surface but at varying depths. Specific skills practiced are plotting latitude & longitude coordinates on a map, plotting longitude vs depth on a graph, and visualizing the same data from multiple perspectives. This is real earthquake data from actual earthquakes in South America.

In this laboratory activity, students will use a loop of string and two tacks to draw one circle and four different ellipses. They will then measure the focal distance and major axis of each of these, and use this data to calculate the eccentricity of each ellipse (and the circle). The analysis questions lead students to discover the overall patterns and apply the knowledge learned in this activity to planetary orbits. Note: Parts of the lab refer to the ESRT. This is New York State's Earth

This worksheet gives a graph (showing the temperatures of soil and water as they heat & cool) and asks students to calculate the rates of change on various intervals. The handout is printable in black/white/grey, and the answer key is attached (answers are filled-in in color). This worksheet is suitable for an Earth Science class as an application of specific heats and rates of heating/cooling, or a Math class as practice reading graphs and calculating slopes.

This is a ten-page fill-in-the-blank style review of the main ideas that students should have learned (or skills that they need to be able to do) from the first 40 labs that I do in 9th/10th grade Earth Science (to help prepare students for the NYS Regents exam). I have included PDFs of the blank version and answer key just in case, but I assume you will edit the Word file because you have probably done some different labs in your class. I do not want my answer keys floating around the internet

This notes sheet is set up grid-style, with the ten steps on Moh's Hardness Scale. It provides the steps, chemical formulas, and pictures of applications. Students will fill in the name of the mineral at each level and the common uses/applications. Answer key is included.

In this worksheet, students review some galaxy types, how scientists determine temperature, composition, distance, & speed from starlight, the name & structure of our galaxy, the definition of a light year, and three pieces of evidence for the Big Bang.

This printout of some NASA news article headings gives teachers the chance to discuss the crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which happened because one contracted company built part of the computer to think in metric units and another built a different part to think in imperial units. That's $193 million wasted because people didn't carefully label their units! The back of the printout has the SI unit prefixes, so this can be an introduction to them, and how metric conversion is so much simpler

This is the handout for the Observing the Environment lab that I give during the Observation, Measurement, & Mapping unit. While completing it, students will observe a feature or object and make observations/inferences about it. I use this as an opportunity to take the class outside. Examples of objects/features to take students to are a boulder, unique flower, tree, or dirt pile. I like to take my classes to a grassy depression and hope they infer that it is a (purposely-designed) drainage d

This is the handout for the Density lab that I give during the Observation, Measurement, & Mapping unit. While completing it, students will measure masses and volumes of various substances and then calculate their densities. Feel free to modify it to suit the materials you have at your school, remove the scribble if you want students to write their data directly on this lab page instead of in their journals, etc. Materials Required: triple-beam balances, ruler, graduated cylinders, calculato

This is a simple one-page fill-in-the-blank notes sheet to use while introducing Latitude and Longitude to students. An answer key is included.