Grains of Sand Reveal Possible Fifth State of Matter

“You walk on the beach, and the sand supports your weight. Pick up a handful, and it runs through your fingers, like a liquid. But you can’t walk on water,” said Jaeger. “In the top of an hourglass, sand is this strange solid. It’s at the verge of being a solid; it flows through the middle as something like a liquid, and then it’s a solid again,” he said.

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USGS FreeTeaching Packets

The USGS has several teaching packets available for download at this site. Topics include such things as maps, caves, climate change, volcanoes. Worth a peek!

Minerals Slide Show

Photo from:
www.richardwestonstudio.com/images.html

Beautiful close-up photos of some of the strangest minerals in the world in a slide show. Breathtaking. Click here.

A Film About Our Planet: HOME

HOME is a full-length film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, being shown on YouTube. The movie shows Earth’s beauty with breathtaking aerial footage, and discusses the impact humans have had on the planet. Below is a short trailer.



You could show parts on several days. Or choose parts to show. Definitely has a theme worthy of showing to an Earth Science class. You decide what your own students can handle. Could even be shown without sound while your students work on an Introduction to Earth Science assignment! (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)

The Formation of Earth's Mantle

"By using a super-computer to virtually squeeze and heat iron-bearing minerals under conditions that would have existed when the Earth crystallized from an ocean of magma to its solid form 4.5 billion years ago, two UC Davis geochemists have produced the first picture of how different isotopes of iron were initially distributed in the solid Earth."