PASSIONATELY CURIOUS

This task requires students to access an activity sheet and have the ability to access on online seismogram viewer. In my classroom, we are 1:1 iPad so I provide the activity as a downloadable pdf and they use their device to complete the activity.

In addition to the digital portion of the investigation, students will also need a printed "Earth Circles" page, scissors, and something to write with (markers work well). All of the necessary files are included at the bottom of this post.

Using www.earthscope.org/app/gsv/, students click on a circle to access data from a recent earthquake. (The red circles represent the most recent quakes)

Each colorful line represents a seismogram measuring the vibrations of the earthquake from a different location on Earth. These positions are measured as an angular distance in degrees (°). 

Students will click on each seismogram to determine the position of the station ( ____ degs away) and mark the locations with a dot on the Circle #1 of the "Earth Circles" printout to represent each of the stations measuring the quake. If they have access to colored markers or pencils, students like to match the star colors to the seismogram color so they don't lose their place but a single color will also function just fine :)

Notice that the vibrations reach the different stations at different times. After taking a screenshot of the seismogram data, students will draw a dot on each graph to represent the first indication of the earthquake waves at that station. An example is shown below…

Using the “Time Since the Earthquake” on the y-axis, students will then determine the time delay to measure the earthquake waves at the closest and farthest stations. This step is to help draw their attention to the values on the y-axis and recognize that the farther away the station is, the longer it takes to register a signal from an earthquake.

Students will notice that, in general, the farther away from the earthquake the station is, the longer the delay before the earthquake vibrations are detected. On their graph, they will also notice that for the last 4-6 stations, the pattern seems to shift and the waves arrive slightly later than expected suggesting that these waves were interrupted by something on their way through the earth

Using the graph, students should estimate the angle at which the waves start to appear slower than expected. In the example above, it is clear that it is somewhere between 100° and 115°, so this student might choose an angle somewhere in the middle like 107°.

Students draw lines on Circle #1 from 0° to the approximate angle (on top and bottom) where the waves noticeably slow down. They will then use scissors to cut out this shape. (This is the only cutting involved so they can probably share scissors)

​Based on the data, there must be something in this area of the earth slowing down the waves. The example shown matches the 107° angle that was estimated in the last step.

Once cut out, students will overlay the “pizza slice” cutout on Circle #2 with the point lined up with 0° and trace the straight cut-out lines. 

To better narrow down the area responsible for slowing down the waves, students can simulate other earthquakes by rotating and tracing the cutout with the point at intervals of 45°. In all, this should trace the shape 8 separate times and the result should start to resemble a star shape across the circle.

This can also be achieved by students swapping shapes and tracing from random "starting points" to make it even more like they are tracking different earthquakes. This was my original plan but it made the step a little more complicated and time dependent for students that were at very different steps of the activity so I changed it to be tracing the same shape multiple times.

​You will notice that regardless of where you place the point of the cutout when you trace it, there will always be one area that never receives any lines. This "mysterious slowing" of the waves must occur in this area. With multiple tracings, students can trace a circle representing the blank area inside the earth. This circle represents the area in the earth’s interior that is interrupting the earthquake waves.

Students will measure the size of the interior circle that they drew (core) compared to the overall circle #2 size and use these measurements to calculate the % of the Earth's diameter taken up by its core.

Looking back at the earthquake data, and measured percentage of the core, is the inner or outer core most responsible for the unexpected slowing of the seismic waves?

Overall, I found that this activity did a nice job of guiding students through the analysis of the seismogram data and identifying the "unexpected slow down". There was a little confusion as I anticipated when it came to the step of tracing the cutout multiple times and using this to identify the size of the core. I made sure to wander the room and assist students by modeling one tracing for them when the time came and they usually picked it up quickly after that.

This activity is an iteration on a wonderful investigation by EarthScope. They also have a great  web-based version  that is worth checking out. The tool to access real earthquake data is what makes this activity so great and I truly appreciate all of the work that has gone into making this data so accessible.

The files, including the editable "Earth Circles" and support slides are included below

The only set up required is to prepare strips of paper. When I run this in my classroom, I like each student to have their own set up so that everyone has something to work on. Strips of paper could be made with receipt paper or even toilet paper but I have usually just cut strips the long way from pieces of 11x17 paper. You can easily get 3-4 strips this way without any cutting and taping required :)

This version of the activity is communicated through a series of visual slides. It would be easy to add some follow up calculations to determine the scale for the model produced and extend it to determine the distance at this scale to the nearest star, Proxima Centari.

I first heard about this simple approach of scaling the solar system from Chandler Beasley during a shareathon at the LIGO Internation Physics and Astronomy Program in 2025. I couldn't stop thinking about the simple hands on approach that allows students to interact with the concepts without getting lost in the math of it all.

The beauty of this activity is that it is entirely self contained in a single print out. Since students will be quantifying area by cutting out the shapes and finding mass on an electronic balance, you will want to print this out on the thickest piece of cardstock that you can find to ensure that the cutouts are large enough to measure. 

"Measure" the Time
Since each dot represents the location of the object each day, counting the number of dots reveals the number of days that the object was in each zone. In this way, students will find that each shape represents 13 days of the planet's orbit

Measure the "Area"
Finding the swept area in this ellipse segments mathematically is quite challenging, so this activity uses mass as a way to compare one area to another. Since the paper/cardstock should be a uniform thickness, larger area corresponds to a larger mass. The exact mass of these segments will depend on the cardstock thickness but the segments should only vary a couple hundredths of a gram (the main challenge is convincing students that their result is about as close to the same as one can measure for something like this)

Once students had an opportunity to "collect their data" regarding this object's orbit, I invited the class to discuss the following questions:

After discussing these, it's nice to jump to the PhET simulation to see what this changing velocity looks like in action and how Kepler's 2nd Law predicts this.

This iteration of the activity was written for a 9th grade earth science classroom but could also be successful with older high schoolers or advanced middle school students. The changes that have been made to this version focus on accessibility and student-paced investigation.

In this activity, students work with 7 graphs, each showing a climate model in which only one forcing factor (orbital changes, solar variation, volcanic eruptions, aerosol pollution, greenhouse gases, land use, and ozone depletion) changes while the rest are held constant. From there, they layer those factors together, compare them against the real measured temperature record, and work out for themselves which ones actually match what we've observed over the past century.

​The goal is that students can gain a deeper understanding of the different mechanisms that impact Earth's climate and how greenhouse gases are the clear factor that is responsible for the warming trend over the past 100 years.

To start the activity, each group of students should begin with a set of 12 climate model cards and organize them into three piles based on the symbol in the top left corner: Measured Temperature (thermometer icon), Forcing Factors (A-G), and Combined (1-3)

The rest of this post will walk through the different steps of the activity with the student questions to help focus their investigation.

It can be challenging to determine the relative impact of each of the factors when the graphs are all automatically scaled to fill the space provided. Putting these graphs on the same axis makes these factors much easier to compare.

Students use the graph cards combining the forcing factors (1-3) to answer the following questions

Graphs 1 and 2 combine the Human and Natural factors together to make one single graph. Use the table below to identify (✅) which factors are considered to be “Human” and which ones are “Natural”

This activity has been a favorite of mine since Dave Fish from the Perimeter Institute shared it at a session that I attended at the 2016 NSTA Convention in Atlanta. The work that he and the rest of the perimeter team have done for the "Evidence for Climate Change" resource is the backbone for this iteration of the activity.

I have used some variation of these climate models over the past decade and I typically guided my students through a series of questions as they each worked with their own set of cards. I have been longing to make this more student-led with questions that help direct their attention to important details and connections as they go. This way students have more control over their investigation and it frees me up for more informal and deeper questioning as I wander around the room. I've now used this iteration of the activity for my first two years of teaching 9th grade earth science. It's been great to see it hit the learning targets while also giving students more room to learn interactively.

If you've taught climate change in the classroom, you may have encountered the Stabilization Wedges game. Developed by Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative back in 2004, the basic idea is that cutting carbon emissions down to a safe level requires scaling up a bunch of strategies that already exist rather than waiting for one "silver bullet" solution. Each "wedge" represents one of those strategies deployed broadly enough to make a meaningful dent. In this original activity, students pick eight wedges to build a plausible path to stabilization. It's a good framework, and the game format (where participants actually choose and defend a proposal) makes the tradeoffs feel real in a way that a lecture usually doesn't.

As we were getting ready to roll this out in our earth science classes, it became clear that the original game was designed with 2004 data and a 50-year window, so some of it is starting to feel dated. After a little searching, we discovered that a research team at Imperial College London recently put out an updated version called Climate Wedges, grounded in a new peer-reviewed Science paper. It's got 36 strategies, a 30-year timeline, and an interactive web tool that lets you build your own decarbonization pathway. It's a solid update - current, well-sourced, and designed with educators in mind - and we were excited to put this in front of our students.

The 36 different climate stabilization wedges in this activity’s cards represent a powerful idea: There is no single “silver bullet” solution to climate change, but rather many different strategies that can, in combination with one another, each reduce a portion of global carbon emissions. The wedges span five major sectors:

This activity can look daunting on first glance (it certainly was when we were putting it together) so I find that it's helpful to have a quick overview of what the general flow looks like before diving into the specifics

1. Organize climate wedge cards onto the parking lot pages
2. Familiarize with the resources and key climate wedge details by using the parking lot descriptions to answer a set of scavenger hunt style questions
3. Select 20 cards from the 36 different climate wedge strategies to represent a proposed solution to keep warming below +1.5°C by 2100. Place these cards on the game board.
4. Use the climatewedges.com interactive tool to create a graph of the predicted future greenhouse gas emissions and resulting warming predictions based on the interactions between the 20 proposed "climate wedge" changes
5. Flip over the 20 cards on the game board to reveal the scope and drawbacks of the selected wedges and reflect on the feasibility of these changes through a series of analysis questions

There are 4 different resources that students need to utilize as they work through this activity. They are outlined here with editable files included at the bottom of this post

For the students:
Place all of the wedge cards in their appropriate box on the “parking lot” sheets. Each wedge highlights not only how the strategy reduces greenhouse gas emissions but also the real-world challenges and enormous scale required for meaningful impact.

There is an overwhelming amount of information involved with 36 different climate wedge strategies. In an effort to get students to start interacting with the descriptions in the parking lot, the activity starts with a little scavenger hunt of sorts were students are given 10 questions that they need to locate answers for the in parking lot. To help make this more manageable, I highlight that questions are organized by wedge category and the color scheme makes it easier to narrow the search :)

Climate wedges are a simple, transparent way to build and debate decarbonisation pathways: you decide which plan to build and compare different choices.

Wedges are a standard unit of climate action. Think of them as building blocks, all the same size, which you stack together to move the emissions curve down. Each wedge delivers the same effect, cutting 30 billion tonnes of carbon over the next 30 years. A total of 20 wedges can hit our goal of limiting climate change to +1.5 °C. 

There are 36 strategies, each able to deliver one (or more!) wedge of mitigation. You can pick and choose between them, building a total of 20 that you believe is most realistic, safest, cheapest, or whatever criteria matter to you. Note that some strategies allow you to repeat the same wedge more than once. You must include at least one wedge from each color category (power, land, industry, transport, and buildings).

Once you have all 20 selections made, go to  ClimateWedges.com  and transfer your selected wedges to the online tool. 

Here is an example of the result after transferring the 20 wedges selected by the students in the image above. As you can see, because of the interactions with some of the solutions (like EVs that require more clean electricity) the predicted warming with these changes is +1.68°C by 2050 and +1.52°C by 2100

After seeing the results of their selected climate wedges, Part 3 of this activity guides students in analyzing the feasibility of their solution by focusing on the scope and drawbacks of their chosen strategies.

Overall, we were really excited about this fresh take on the classic wedges game and thought it provided students with an opportunity to interact with these ideas at multiple different levels of depth. In future implementations of this activity, there are a few things that we would like to try...

• Provide a little more scaffolding for struggling students to make things less overwhelming. 36 strategies all at once can be a lot so perhaps starting the activity with a 'would you rather' style activity. It would be easy to pick two random wedges that student have to select 1. This could then be extended to pick 3 of 5 as a way to build up to the ultimate goal
• Extend this to a two-day activity for honors-level students and have them write up a report to describe and defend their proposal in the face of the listed drawbacks for their selected strategies
• As an extension, use these materials to have students do a deeper dive into 1 or 2 different strategies. Here is an example of a first draft of an activity like this.

There are quite a few materials to prep to make this activity more hands-on and tactile. Each of the files are posted below as editable google docs/slides and pdfs

This resource follows the general format of the original Carbon Stabilization Wedges Game by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (https://cmi.princeton.edu/resources/stabilization-wedges/) and greatly leverages the amazing wedge updates by Nathan Johnson and Iain Staffell as a part of their peer-reviewed paper in Science and interactive online tool (https://www.climatewedges.com/index.html). Most of the credit for this activity goes to these two groups.

This specific activity as printed cards, student worksheets, and parking lot descriptions was a collaboration with my colleague Kevin Burns and the rest of our Minnetonka High School earth science team. There were so many details in putting this together that it was definitely a team effort :)