Earth and Space Science

Geology

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NOVA

RESOURCE	GRADE LEVEL	MEDIA TYPE
1900 Air Pollution Examine this graph from FRONTLINE/NOVA: "What's Up with the Weather?" Web site to see dramatic increases in three greenhouse gases over the last two hundred years.	9-12	Document
Antarctica: A Challenging Work Day What happens when the ground under your feet is ice and it's moving? This video segment adapted from NOVA features some of the dangers faced by scientists conducting research in Antarctica.	3-12	Video
Antarctic Ice Movement: Part I This video segment adapted from NOVA explains why ice sheets move. To find out how fast they move, scientists carve a tunnel through a glacier.	6-12	Video
Antarctic Ice Movement: Part II Within Antarctic ice sheets are fast-moving streams of ice. This video segment adapted from NOVA hypothesizes about how ice streams are the result of warming at the end of the last ice age.	6-12	Video
Antarctic Ice: Sea Level Change What would happen if a portion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt? This video segment adapted from NOVA uses animations to show the effect of a 6-meter sea-level rise on coastal cities across the world.	6-12	Video
Are We Alone? This video segment adapted from NOVA features a variety of scientific perspectives on the age old question, "Are we alone in the universe?" Animations make vivid the improbability that we could intercept a radio wave signaling extra terrestrial intelligence.	6-12	Video
Astronauts Speak: Gene Cernan In this audio resource from NOVA, astronaut Gene Cernan recounts his harrowing experience during America's first attempt to do work in outer space.	3-12	Audio
Becoming a Fossil This video segment describes how the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as Lucy could have been fossilized. Footage courtesy of NOVA: "In Search of Human Origins."	6-12	Video
Beneath the Waters of Cocos Island The nutrient-rich waters surrounding Cocos Island set the stage for astounding predator-prey interactions, as seen in this video segment from NOVA: "Island of Sharks."	6-8	Video
Booming Sands This video segment, adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, presents basic concepts of physics behind "booming" sand dunes. See how surface tension affects potential and kinetic energy and how it all works together to create sound.	6-12	Video
Capturing Carbon In this video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, a scientist, inspired by his daughter's science fair project, develops a synthetic "tree" to remove excess carbon dioxide from the air.	6-12	Video
Cave Formation: Biogeochemical Cycles This video segment adapted from NOVA chronicles the discoveries that led to a radical new theory in which living organisms, not just geological processes, play an active role in cave formation.	6-12	Video
Cave Formation: Kane Cave This video segment adapted from NOVA describes a simple experiment that confirmed the idea that microbes can accelerate the biogeochemical process of cave formation.	6-12	Video
Caves: Extreme Conditions for Life This video segment adapted from NOVA raises the provocative idea that if life can exist in the most extreme environments on Earth — such as in dark, toxic caves — then perhaps living things can also survive in harsh environments on other planets.	6-12	Video
Construct an Aqueduct Think like an engineer and build an aqueduct in this interactive activity from the NOVA Web site.	3-12	Interactive
Dating Lava Flows on Mauna Loa Volcano, Hawaiʻi In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientists search for carbonized remains of plants preserved in lava flows to find out how long it has taken rain forests on Hawaiʻi to regenerate after a volcanic eruption.	3-12	Video
Decomposers Without the work of decomposers, living organisms would eventually use up all the raw materials in the environment, and dead organisms and wastes would pile up. This video segment from Interactive NOVA: "Earth" describes the role of decomposers as the Earth's great recyclers.	K-5	Video
Deep-Sea Vents and Life's Origins Deep-sea vents are home to life forms that do not rely on the Sun's energy. They depend instead on energy from volcanoes on the ocean floor. This video segment adapted from NOVA hypothesizes that life on Earth may have begun in this extreme environment.	3-12	Video
Desert Biome This video segment from NOVA: "A Desert Place" describes the physical characteristics and organisms that define the desert biome.	3-12	Video
Diamonds: The Science Behind the Sparkle This illustrated essay from the NOVA Web site explains why the atomic structure of a diamond slows down light and produces a sparkle more brilliant than from any other colorless substance.	6-12	Document
Earthquake Prediction This video segment adapted from NOVA tells the tragic story of two Japanese seismologists who disagreed about the threat of earthquakes in the early twentieth century. Today, seismologists in California offer residents a probability of risk that an earthquake might occur.	6-12	Video
Earthquakes: Los Angeles In this video segment adapted from NOVA, animations are used to show how the hills around Los Angeles were formed by earthquakes at small thrust faults that extend outward from the larger San Andreas fault.	6-12	Video
Earthquakes: San Francisco The history of earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay area is plotted on a digital map and analyzed in this video segment adapted from NOVA.	6-12	Video
Earthquakes: The Prehistoric Record In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a geologist digs a trench along the San Andreas Fault to reveal three thousand years of earthquake history. Information from the layers of sediment may help geologists to predict earthquakes.	3-12	Video
Earthquakes: The Seismograph This video segment adapted from NOVA uses historical illustrations, photographs, and animations to explain how seismographs work, the difference between P and S waves, and the Richter scale.	6-12	Video
Exploring the Arctic Seafloor In this interactive activity adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, learn what some of the first imagery ever shot on the Arctic Ocean seabed tells us about life in extreme environments.	6-12	Interactive
Extreme Temperatures on the Moon In this video segment adapted from Interactive NOVA, astronaut John Young experiences extreme temperatures on the Moon that are a result of the Moon's low gravity and lack of atmosphere.	3-12	Video
Fastest Glacier In this video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, scientists in western Greenland explain how a glacier there is shrinking and moving faster due to increased melting.	6-12	Video
Flood: Farming and Erosion In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientists investigate how farming along the Mississippi River impacts floods and what can be done about it.	3-12	Video
Global Warming: Beyond Fossil Fuels Martin Hoffert, professor of physics at New York University, discusses global warming and alternative energies in this interview from the NOVA/FRONTLINE Web site.	6-12	Document
Global Warming: Graphs Tell the Story Examine these graphs from the NOVA/ FRONTLINE Web site to see dramatic increases in the temperature of Earth's surface and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.	6-12	Document
Global Warming: Graphs Tell the Story Examine graphs from the NOVA/FRONTLINE Web site to see dramatic changes in the temperature of Earth's surface and in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.	9-12	Document
Global Warming: The Physics of the Greenhouse Effect This video segment adapted from NOVA/FRONTLINE examines the greenhouse effect, its role in keeping Earth habitable, and the industrial changes that have led to an increase in the planet's average temperature.	6-12	Video
The Grand Canyon: Ancient Mountains This video segment adapted from NOVA features the twisted and melted forms of the Grand Canyon's oldest rocks, the 1.7-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist.	6-12	Video
The Grand Canyon: Conservation and Development This video segment adapted from NOVA explores the effects of the Glen Canyon Dam on the beaches, wildlife, and vegetation of the Colorado River.	3-12	Video
The Grand Canyon: Evidence of Earth's Past In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a fossil found among the Grand Canyon's rock layers reveals the existence of a shallow sea that once covered most of western North America.	6-12	Video
The Grand Canyon: How It Formed This video segment adapted from NOVA uses animation to present the theory of how the Grand Canyon was formed and features rare footage of a phenomenon known as debris flow.	3-12	Video
The Grand Canyon: Its Youngest Rocks This video segment adapted from NOVA features the youngest rock formations in the Grand Canyon, lava dams, and how they are subject to the eroding power of water.	6-12	Video
The Grand Canyon: The Top Two Rock Layers This brief video segment adapted from NOVA uses illustrations and the well-preserved footprints of a small reptile to portray the history of the Grand Canyon's top two rock layers.	3-12	Video
The Great Flood of 1993 In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a meteorologist explains how an unusual weather pattern led to one of the most devastating floods of this century.	6-12	Video
How Did Life Emerge Here? This video segment adapted from NOVA describes the emergence of life on the islands of Hawaiʻi from a barren volcanic platform under the ocean waves to the rich explosion of life that covers the many climate zones of the islands today.	3-12	Video
Hurricanes: New Orleans Under Threat This video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW exposes how decades of development and geography combined to make the potential damage from a hurricane uniquely devastating in New Orleans, Louisiana.	6-12	Video
Hurricanes: New Tools for Predicting This video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW features new advances in predicting the intensity of hurricanes.	6-12	Video
Ingredients for Life: Water This video segment adapted from NOVA goes on a whimsical journey in search of life forms thriving in extreme conditions on Earth and in outer space. Animations show ice on Jupiter's moon, Europa, and signs that water once existed on Mars.	3-12	Video
Laetoli Footprints This Evolution video segment describes how the famous track fossils known as the Laetoli footprints might have been formed and what they can reveal about the creatures who left them.	6-12	Video
Lava Sampling on Kilauea Volcano, Hawaiʻi In this video segment adapted from NOVA, scientist Mike Garcia draws lava samples at the foot of the active Kilauea volcano to see if it is related to its neighboring volcano, Mauna Loa.	6-12	Video
The Leaning Tower: Where It Stands Today Will the Leaning Tower of Pisa give way to gravity? In this interview from the NOVA Web site, engineer John Burland relates the difficult job of saving the tower.	6-12	Document
Life Before Oxygen This video segment adapted from Interactive NOVA features evidence of life on Earth before the atmosphere contained a rich supply of oxygen.	3-12	Video
Life Before Oxygen This Interactive NOVA: "Earth" video segment looks at ancient organisms that lived anaerobically, the origins of photosynthesis, and the new forms of life this process made possible.	3-12	Video
Mars Dead or Alive: A Hostile Environment This NOVA video segment describes the challenges presented by the frozen desert environment of Mars to NASA engineers designing two robots that will journey millions of miles to the red planet.	6-12	Video
Mount Pinatubo: Predicting a Volcanic Eruption This video segment adapted from NOVA relates the dramatic story of vulcanologists trying to predict the timing of the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.	6-12	Video
Mount Pinatubo: The Aftermath of a Volcanic Eruption This video segment adapted from NOVA features footage of the aftermath of the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, including falling ash and mud flows.	3-12	Video
Organic Farming: Conserving Topsoil Against the backdrop of the devastating 1930's Dust Bowl, this video segment adapted from Interactive NOVA profiles an organic farmer and the techniques he uses to conserve topsoil.	3-12	Video
The Origin of the Moon This video segment adapted from NOVA follows the Apollo 15 astronauts as they collect samples of ancient rock from the Moon's crust, whose discovery helps lead to a radical new theory about the Moon's origin.	6-12	Video
Plate Tectonics: The Hawaiʻian Archipelago This video segment adapted from NOVA uses animation to show the relationship between the movement of a tectonic plate and whether volcanoes on the Hawaiian Islands are active or dormant.	6-12	Video
Relativity and the Cosmos This illustrated essay from the NOVA Web site introduces the basic concepts of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and what we know about cosmology as a result.	6-12	Document
Secrets in the Salt This video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW describes a team of scientists searching for evidence of ancient life within a salt deposit that formed 250 million years ago.	6-12	Video
Sound Waves Underwater: The Loch Ness Monster This video segment, adapted from NOVA follows a team of enthusiasts and scientists who attempt to find a trace of the Loch Ness monster by scouring the lake with sonar.	6-12	Video
Sound Waves Underwater: True or False This interactive quiz from the NOVA Web site features an array of interesting facts about the nature of sound underwater.	3-12	Interactive
Sources of Radiation This interactive activity from the NOVA Web site explores sources of radiation, both harmful and beneficial, natural and manmade.	6-12	Interactive
Stories in the Ice Take a journey back through time, on the NOVA/FRONTLINE Web site, using ice cores to learn about Earth's climatic history, including evidence of global warming and nuclear activity.	6-12	Document
Taking the Earth's Temperature This video segment from FRONTLINE/NOVA: "What's Up with the Weather?" depicts research efforts to record Earth's past and present temperatures shifts.	9-12	Video
When Did the First Americans Arrive? In this video segment adapted from NOVA, recent archeological evidence leads scientists to revise existing theories about human migrations into the Americas around the time of the last ice age.	6-12	Video