Math-Sci-Guy

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.

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.

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.