Curriculum


 * Big Ideas:**
 * 1) Phenomena on earth or in the Universe can be classified or typed according to measured characteristics.
 * 2) The universe is very old, requiring direct and indirect measurements to determine ages and distances.
 * 3) The structure of the earth system can be organized and classified in different ways depending on different characteristics.
 * 4) The Earth is a complex, evolving, set of interrelated systems.
 * 5) Equilibrium and changes in the Earth systems can understood in terms of energy transformation and transport.
 * 6) Earth’s atmosphere circulates in predictable patterns in response to solar heating, gravitational forces, and earth’s rotation, giving rise to both short-term patterns (weather) and long-term patterns (climate).
 * 7) Motion of earth's lithosphere and underlying mantle, driven by thermal and gravitational energy, constantly recycles materials and reshape the landscape of the planet.


 * Concepts:**
 * 1) **Big Idea #1 Phenomena on earth or in the Universe can be classified or typed according to useful measured characteristics.**
 * 2) The combination of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets attracted by gravity revolving around a sun make a solar system.
 * 3) Comparisons among the eight planet’s features including orbits, mass, size, density, composition, albedo, and moons show distinct similarities and significant differences.
 * 4) The luminosity of a star is related to the amount of energy emitted by the star each second.
 * 5) Stellar temperatures can be determined from a star’s colored light or spectra.
 * 6) Stars can be classified into spectral types, O B, A, F, G, K, relating emitted light to internal composition.
 * 7) Graphs of stellar luminosity against surface temperature (Hertzsprung-Russell diagram) show patterns that can be used to classify star types such as super giants, giants, main sequence, and white dwarfs.
 * 8) There is a direct correlation between a main sequence star’s mass and its luminosity.
 * 9) Galaxies are a large collection of stars, gas, and dust revolving around a massive black hole nucleus with either a spiral shape (like our own Milky Way Galaxy), elliptical shape, or irregular shape.
 * 10) Most of the Universe’s mass that is estimated by gravitational attraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation; so it is invisible or "dark.
 * 11) **Big Idea #2 The universe is very old, requiring direct and indirect measurements to determine age and distance.**
 * 12) The immense amounts of time inherent in the evolution of earth allow very slow processes to accumulate major effects.
 * 13) Stars evolve throughout their lifetimes. The gases in nebulas condense, starting nuclear fusion reactions that produce a star’s energy using elements beginning with hydrogen and progressing to iron.
 * 14) Plotting a star cluster on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram determines its age.
 * 15) The Sun and the solar system and many other stars and their planetary systems including our planets are formed from the debris of older systems left behind when their stars exploded.
 * 16) Many of the stars in our galaxy and in other galaxies have planetary systems, and some of those planets may support life.
 * 17) Distances to stars can be measured by stellar parallax or spectroscopic parallax.
 * 18) Cepheid Variable stars are important in determining the distance to galaxies.
 * 19) The Universe is expanding and will continue to expand based on observed cosmological redshift of spectra from distant galaxies and quasars.
 * 20) The age of the Universe according to the "Big Bang" theory is estimated at 13.7 billion years based on spectral redshift and cosmological background radiation measurements.
 * 21) **Big Idea #3 The structure of the earth system can be organized and classified in different ways depending on different characteristics.**
 * 22) The Earth’s interior can be classified into layers based upon different properties. Layers can be organized by increasing density including the crust, mantle, and core. Layers organized based on different reactions to stress include the lithosphere, asthenosphere, mesosphere, and outer and inner core.
 * 23) The solid earth is compositionally layered with a core of iron-nickel-sulfur alloy, a mantle of iron-magnesium silicates and oxides that makes up most of the rest of the earth, and a very thin crust of varied silicates, carbonates, and other minor components.
 * 24) The crust and mantle are made up of rocks, the properties of which depend on the minerals or other materials of which they are made and their texture.
 * 25) Rocks can be classified by their origin and formation as igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Each different process of rock formation usually leads to rocks with distinctive physical properties.
 * 26) Gravity causes the air density to decrease with increasing altitude above the Earth’s surface such that most of the atmosphere’s mass is concentrated in a shallow region compared to the size of the earth. Combining density with movement, chemical composition and thermal characteristics, the atmosphere has been organized into 5 layers progressing from the Earth’s surface: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere.
 * 27) The atmosphere is made udifferent components including clouds, precipitation, major gases including nitrogen, oxygen, and minor components carbon dioxide, ozone and common pollutants.
 * 28) Clouds can be classified according by altitude, formation and/or composition.
 * 29) Throughout the earth, the oceans form one interconnected circulation system powered by wind, tides, the Earth’s rotation, and water density differences. The shape of the oceans basins and adjacent land masses influence the path of the water circulation.
 * 30) **Big Idea #4 The Earth is a complex, evolving, set of interrelated systems.**
 * 31) Matter on earth is conserved as matter flows through a variety of biogeochemical cycles.
 * 32) The carbon cycle includes carbon storage reservoirs including the ground, atmosphere, and oceans. The time for transformations between reservoirs can be short as in the transformation of fossil fuels to carbon dioxide or long as in the transformation of biomass into coal, oil, or natural gas.
 * 33) The water cycle involves the transportation of water between reservoirs through evaporation, precipitation, surface runoff, and ground water percolation, infiltration, and transpiration leading to a cyclical path as water evaporates from the earth’s surface, condenses as clouds, falls to and collects on the earth’s surface.
 * 34) Most earth processes operate today in ways that are very similar to ways they operated in the past. Evidence of past processes can be in Earth materials, particularly in and the sequence and the compositions and textures of rocks. This evidence can be used to infer the geologic history of an area.
 * 35) **Big Idea #5 Equilibrium and changes in the earth systems can understood in terms of energy transformation and transport.**
 * 36) The energy that drives earth systems comes from solar radiation, gravitation, and heat, largely generated by decay of radioactive elements. On the surface of the earth, energy input from solar energy is significantly greater than heat flow from within the earth.
 * 37) Earth's axis of rotation is tilted such that different places on earth’s surface receive the sun’s energy most intensely at different times of the year, giving rise to the seasons.
 * 38) Atmospheric, hydrospheric, biologic, and tectonic systems all influence each other.
 * 39) Energy and matter are constantly redistributed in earth systems by flows of air, water and cycles in the earth.
 * 40) Waves transfer energy in tsunamis, diurnal heating, earthquakes, and greenhouse effect.
 * 41) Thunderstorms and other severe weather events form only in the troposphere where heating of air at the Earth’s surface makes near surface air unstable with respect to colder air at higher altitudes.
 * 42) Heat is trapped by greenhouse gases by the following energy transformation process. Solar ultraviolet radiation passing through the atmosphere is absorbed by molecules of the atmosphere. The warmer atmospheric molecules reradiate energy as infrared radiation which is reflected by the greenhouse gases.
 * 43) **Big Idea #6 Earth’s atmosphere circulates in predictable patterns in response to solar heating, gravitational forces, and earth’s rotation, giving rise to both short-term patterns (weather) and long-term patterns (climate).**
 * 44) Heating in the tropics reduces air density and leads to large scale inward and upward (convergent) flow. Cooling in the polar latitudes increases air density and leads to large scale downward and outward (divergent) flow.
 * 45) Large-scale temperature/density driven circulation combines with the rotation of the earth (Coriolis effect) to create large-scale bands of prevailing winds that blow either generally from east to west ("easterlies") or west to east ("westerlies").
 * 46) Air masses can be cool or warm and can be humid or dry and as air masses move, they carry (advect) moisture and energy with them.
 * 47) In the mid-latitudes, weather is determined by the motion and interaction of large masses of air with relatively distinct boundaries (fronts) and relatively consistent internal properties.
 * 48) In the Northern Hemisphere, low pressure systems often have a warm front extending generally eastward from their centers and a cold front extending generally southward from their centers.
 * 49) **Big Idea #7 Motion of Earth's lithosphere and underlying mantle, driven by thermal and gravitational energy, constantly recycles materials and reshape the landscape of the planet.**
 * 50) Pressure and temperature increase downward to the center of the earth, changing the physical properties of earth materials, producing a rigid lithosphere, plastic mantle, liquid outer core and solid inner core.
 * 51) Earth’s lithosphere is broken into a number of large rigid plates that move with respect to each other.
 * 52) Plate motions occur both episodically (earthquakes) and continuously (creep) on time scales of days to hundreds of years, but are essentially continuous on time scales of thousands to millions of years.
 * 53) Plates can move away from each other (divergence) at mid-ocean ridges, toward each other (convergence) at subduction zones and continent-continent collision zones, or laterally past one another on large scale transform (strike slip) faults.
 * 54) Plate motions can distort rocks along plate boundaries, storing elastic energy. When this energy is released suddenly by sliding along a crack, an earthquake occurs.
 * 55) Although the volume of magma in the lithosphere is always small, that magma is concentrated in zones related to plate boundaries or deep-seated mantle plumes where it can erupt in sufficient volumes to create volcanic mountain ranges and island chains. The composition of the magma reflects the material from which the magma originates and the tectonic environment.
 * 56) The recycling of plate tectonics generally involves only oceanic lithosphere. Continental lithosphere is more buoyant and, once formed, remains at or near Earth’s surface.
 * 57) On and around continents, rocks of earth’s crust may be repeatedly modified or transformed through igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary processes. As these processes occur, the composition of the rocks may evolve over time.
 * 58) The properties of rocks depend on the minerals of which they are made and their texture, which in turn both reflect the process of formation. Geologists organize rocks by texture and composition in ways that reflect the rocks’ origins


 * Competencies:**
 * 1) Select features to observe and make detailed observations of the earth system directly or from remotely-sensed data, record observations in organized format, and explain those observations in terms of systems and processes.
 * 2) Track the flow of materials and energy in the solid earth and explain the flow with respect to material properties and plate tectonic theory.
 * 3) Use observations and inference about the materials and processes at a place to formulate reasonable explanations about how that place has come to look the way it does and about how Earth’s systems interact at that place.
 * 4) Be able to use models and maps to effectively investigate and explain processes that occur over very large areas and extremely long times.
 * 5) Analyze evidence for the statement that the Sun is 4.6 billion years old, Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and both have evolved over time.