Earth Science—

What IS this course about?

Everything from the rocks under our feet to the galaxy carrying us through the universe at over a million miles per hour. The layers of the sky, the movements of the oceans and continents, the stars fusing lighter elements into heavier elements, the Big Bang that seems to have started it all -- we’ll be covering a lot of ground! Much of it will connect to issues of sustainability -- where do the materials we use every day (often without a thought) come from, and where do they go? How are we (humans) changing the planet we evolved on?

In addition to scientific content, we’ll also develop scientific skills: making observations, asking questions, coming up with ways to test them, analyzing data, determining what we need to know next, and creating scientific models based our observations -- that is how we’ve built up our knowledge of the world we live on and the universe we live in, and they are extremely useful skills no matter what you do in life!