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Listed under:  Science  >  Earth and space  >  Atmosphere
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A Little Atmosphere

This activity invites students to model the scaled thickness of the atmosphere on a globe using sheets of transparency material. The activity includes a list of tools and materials required, what to do and notice, an explanation for the underlying science of what students observe and suggestions for further activities.

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Visualising climate change lesson

In this lesson, students explore different approaches to data representation, with the aim of engaging audiences with scientific data. They explore local temperature and rainfall datasets over time and represent trends in innovative ways. Students learn about different ways to visually represent climate change, looking ...

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Designing urban carbon sinks lesson

In this lesson, students learn about the role of vegetation as carbon sinks, conduct field work to evaluate local carbon sinks and explore urban design issues. Students asses their own carbon footprints using the carbon footprint calculator, learn about carbon offset, carbon farming and carbon storage programs. Students ...

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Catalyst: Impact of coming to school on carbon emissions

How big is your carbon footprint as you travel to and from school? Watch Daniel O'Doherty, 2008 'Action Against Climate Change' Eureka Schools Prize winner, as he determines his hypothesis then designs and conducts a study about carbon emissions. Listen to the recommendations he makes to reduce and offset the emissions ...

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Lateline: Carbon capture and storage

Is carbon capture and storage (CCS) the solution to climate change? CCS technology captures carbon dioxide from the flue gases of coal burning power plants and takes it to long-term storage. The coal industry has high hopes that pumping the liquefied gas into underground reservoirs, or geo-sequestration, will provide safe ...

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Four Corners: Increasing threat of megafires

Many scientists believe we are already experiencing megafires and that they will continue to increase in the future. In this clip you will hear from Australian scientists at the forefront of fire research. Discover what they have to say about the causes, projections, and consequences of an increased megafire threat.

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Colourful Weather, Ep 1: What shape is a rainbow?

All you need is water, the sky and sunlight and you’ve got something that’s colourful – with a pot of gold at each end. What is it? A rainbow! Find out what happens to sunlight inside a raindrop, why rainbow colours are always in the same order and the real shape of a rainbow. Tip: it’s not an arch!

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Catalyst: Chemical pollutants toxic to whales

Explore how chemical pollutants affect the Antarctic food web. A scientist shows that baleen whales are consuming Antarctic krill contaminated by accumulated residues of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from pesticides and industrial chemicals. Find out why these pollutants are concentrated at the Earth's polar regions.

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Landline: Water footprints in food manufacturing

How much water does it take to produce a large packet of M&Ms? Watch as the 'water footprint' of some household products is presented and hear the concerns expressed about the methods used to calculate these footprints. Discover how an examination of the water used by the components of some manufactured foods has led to ...

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Catalyst: Aboriginal fire knowledge reduces greenhouse gases

Come on an eye-opening trip to Western Arnhem Land in northern Australia to find out how Aboriginal fire-control techniques are used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by thousands of tonnes.On the trip you will also find out how exploding ping-pong balls are used to create low greenhouse gas firebreaks at the right time ...

Interactive

Oresome world

This interactive resource takes students on a journey of discovery in the energy and mining world. Oresome world contains five games or modules: Coal, Energy, Gas, Low emissions and Mining, and within each of these there are several facilities to explore, such as the Underground mining site, Hydroelectric power station, ...

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EarthViewer - iTunes app

Journey through geological time and discover changes on Earth from the Hadean time, more than 4.5 billion years ago, through to today. Find out about plate tectonics, continental movement, atmospheric conditions, life on Earth, extinction events, fossil sites and much more. Contains many features which include allowing ...

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Global change - iTunes app

Explores the global carbon and water cycles as well as the role that plants play in these cycles with particular emphasis on the stomata in the leaves. Also looks at human impact on these cycles and the climate. Includes videos, simulations showing changes over time, graphs, maps and a detailed glossary section. Free when ...

Interactive

The greenhouse effect

This is an interactive resource about how greenhouse gases affect the climate. Students use a simulation to explore the atmosphere during the ice age and today. They change variables such as adding clouds, changing greenhouse gas concentrations and see how the temperature changes. They can then compare this to the effect ...

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Keeping up with carbon

What is the carbon cycle and how does it affect climate? Find out in this fascinating clip from NASA, produced to celebrate Earth Science Week 2009.

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Climate change – creating critical thinkers … not sceptics!

Climate change was once just part of the science domain, but today it is a political juggernaut! This unit explores the science of climate change as a scientific concept and a political issue. The unit includes PDF resources and video quiz challenges for teachers and student and the library section provides extra resources ...

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Cloud seeding

This nine and a half minute video segment from Catalyst describes how researchers from Monash University have hard evidence that cloud seeding can produce good amounts of extra rainfall. Data collected over a long period of time has give hope to scientists and environmentalists who are trying to reduce the impacts of droughts ...

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Water recycling

This 11 minute video segment from Catalyst provides an excellent explanation of the processes involved in recycling sewage for an urban water supply. It also provides a range of opinions and concerns in an excellent debate on the topic.

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Solar thermal electricity

This program gives an update on research into solar thermal electricity. Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley, NSW is a hybrid power station using solar energy to pre-heat water and so reduce the use of coal and the production of carbon dioxide. Some scientists claim that harnessing the solar heat in an area 50km ...

Interactive

Why is the ozone hole bigger in the less polluted southern hemisphere?

This article provides an excellent model of a scientific explanation. It addresses the question "if the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere is much more polluted than it is in the southern hemisphere, why is there an ozone hole in the south and not in the north?"