Posted by David Wetzel
Geometry of Triangles
These resources offer online opportunities to explore the geometry of triangles.
From ideas of congruence to reflections to relationships among the triangle’s angles and sides.
Interactive Geometry Websites
Congruence - Using virtual manipulatives, students can arrange sides and angles to construct congruent triangles using Congruence of Triangles.
Angles - This interactive problem solving exploration of triangles begins at the beginning—with angles and their classification. Students can practice their understanding and then move on to construct triangles and consider the sum of the angles of any triangle. Finally, they explore the special relationship among the sides of a right triangle—the Pythagorean theorem, demonstrated here through a Java slide show using Geometry of Angles.
Equilateral - Students learn the theorems of triangle congruence using a challenging problem solving application. Here students are presented with an intricate figure showing two overlapping equilateral triangles. Because this resource is an applet, students can rotate the figure and easily see that two triangles in the figure are congruent. The challenge is to prove the triangles are congruent using Two Equilateral Triangles.
Transformation and Reflection - Students can manipulate one of six geometric figures on one side of a line of symmetry and observe the effect on its image on the other side. A triangle may be selected and then translated and rotated. The line of symmetry can be moved as well, even rotated, giving more hands-on experience with reflection as students observe the effect on the image of the triangle using Transformations and Reflection.
Posted by David Wetzel
Science in Your Watershed
The science in your watershed website is provided by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to assist teachers and students find scientific information about specific watersheds.
This information, coupled with observations and measurements made by the watershed groups, provides a powerful foundation for characterizing, assessing, analyzing, and maintaining the status and health of a watershed.
Science in Your Watershed
Discussions with watershed groups across the country resulted in this web site. This web site provides access to:
- Locate Your Watershed - use an interactive mapping interface to locate your watershed and link to additional information from your watershed.
- Information Discovery - find projects, publications, and databases related to your watershed.
- Data Integration - learn more about how you can use scientific data to understand your watershed.
This web site provides a decision-support process by making accessible recent case studies of projects that have occurred, publications that have been produced, developing databases, information assembled, and provides access to free and nearly free software and tools for manipulating spatial information.
Posted by David Wetzel
Climate Change
Are you searching for interactive graphics for use in science class to show your students the current and expected effects of global warming?
The Climate Time Machine by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and California Institute of Technology (CIT) of NASA provides the graphics you need.
These graphics are also excellent for displaying on an interactive white board (IWB) to allow you and your students to interact with the data provided by the graphics representing climate change .
Climate Change
The Climate Time Machine provides information in the following four categories:
Sea Level: recent satellite observations have detected a thinning of parts of the Greenland ice sheet at lower elevations. A partial melting of this ice sheet would cause a 1-meter (3-foot) rise. If melted completely, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to raise sea level by 5-7 meters (16-23 feet). This visualization shows the effect on coastal regions for each meter of sea level rise, up to 6 meters (19.7 feet).
Sea Ice: this visualization shows the annual Arctic sea ice minimum from 1979 to 2007. At the end of each summer, the sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent, leaving what is called the perennial ice cover. The area of the perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since the satellite record began in 1979.
CO2 Emissions: this visualization shows the amount of annual carbon dioxide emissions produced by the top 12 nations or regions from 1980-2004.
Average Global Temperature: this color-coded map shows a progression of changing global surface temperatures from 1885 to 2007.
Sources
JPL Climate Time Machine
6 Little Known Facts about Earth
Google Earth and Global Warming Science Projects
