This lesson contains a card sort activity that challenges students to predict relative albedo values of common surfaces. 

Students use albedo values of common surfaces along with photographic images of Earth taken from the International Space Station to make an argument about specific anthropogenic activities that impact Earth’s albedo.

Students connect day/night and seasonal cycles with albedo in the Arctic region. 

Students explore albedo, sea ice, and the relationship between changing albedo and changing sea ice using data visualizations. 

Students will make a claim about whether changing albedo contributes to changes in Arctic habitats.

Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.

Students collect and analyze temperature data to explore what governs how much energy is reflected. 

Using various visualizations (i.e., images, charts, and graphs), students will explore changes in sea ice extent as it relates to other spheres within the Earth System. This StoryMap is intended to be used with students who have access to the internet in a 1:1 or 1:2 setting.

This graphic organizer may be used to help students analyze the processes and components of Earth System phenomena.

In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.