Air quality is a measure of the pollution level in the air. Polluted air can be caused by many things. There are manmade and natural sources of emissions. 

Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology. 

In this activity, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of temperature and density in deep ocean currents.  This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Students model Earth's tectonic plate movement and explore the relationship between these movements and different types of volcanoes.

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.

In this activity, students will model  the geometry of solar eclipses by plotting a few points on a piece of graph paper, and using quarters and a nickel to represent the Sun and Moon (not to scale). 

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.

In this activity, students will analyze past and future eclipse data and orbital models to determine why we don’t experience eclipses every month.

Students interpret AQI maps and charts to compare today’s AQI with the past five days. Using the EPA’s air quality activity guides, students create a social media post for residents of their region providing key information related to today’s AQI.