Category: Investigations

Chapter 9 { Energy Flow Contents } It’s a sunny spring day. Lush green grass from winter rainstorms carpets the hillside, punctuated here and there with ancient oak trees. Zooming in on one of the trees we see that it’s alive with hundreds of oak caterpillars, munching holes in the leaves. It’s a feast day […]

Chapter 7 { Energy Flow Contents } “Dad was outside and Mom and I were getting dinner ready,” said Karen Knobloch, who lived with her parents on a farm in northwest Iowa.  “Dad came inside and said we’d better get to the basement. It hit when we were halfway down the steps.” Windows were blown […]

{ Energy Flow Contents } { All GSS Books } Your job as a member of Heat Trappers, Inc., is to work with a team of engineers (your fellow students) to create as warm an environment as possible for some miniature exotic tropical plants that have just been acquired for your school’s new botanical garden.  […]

Chapter 6 { Energy Flow Contents } Most natural systems are continuously changing. Yet within them certain things remain the same, or fluctuate within limits. Any balance between opposing forces or influences can be called “equilibrium.” There are two kinds of equilibrium: static and dynamic. Systems in Static Equilibrium Static equilibrium is when parts of […]

Chapter 5 { Energy Flow Contents } It is 10°C below zero outdoors, and the snow is piled high against the walls of the Tromsø Planetarium—the most northerly planetarium in the world.  But it’s warm and cozy indoors, where Planetarium Director Franck Petersson shows us some of his most recent photographs of the aurora borealis, […]

Chapter 3 { Energy Flow Contents } The convection currents discussed in the last chapter explain most of the world’s volcanoes, because most volcanoes occur along the edges of plates. In some of these places, the rift zones, plates are spreading apart, so magma comes up from below to cause the volcanoes. In other cases, […]

Chapter 7 { Ecosystem Change Contents } The citizens of the United States use more energy and resources per person than do people in other countries. What can we do to reduce our individual and collective impact on earth’s global system? On the pages that follow, we have described some actions taken by students to […]

Chapter 6 { Ecosystem Change Contents } In an influential essay entitled, “Essay on the Principle of Population,” Thomas Malthus noted that the growth of population and what he thought should be the inevitable tidal wave of people that would eventually inhabit the Earth, hadn’t occurred and that somehow the human population must be kept […]

Chapter 5 { Ecosystem Change Contents } I. The Carbon Dioxide Cycle When we enjoy the beauty of a tree we probably aren’t thinking of this marvelous structure as a carbon-based system that transforms sunlight and gases into food. A single cell in a tree leaf is a tiny system that uses light energy plus […]

Chapter 4 { Ecosystem Change Contents } Dr. Steven Schneider, climatologist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has been very vocal in alerting the public to the impending dangers of global climate change. In an interview for the TV documentary, “Race to Save the Planet,” he shares his sense of urgency…. “Fifteen thousand years […]