Class 1: Deep Time – How Old is the Earth, Really?
This opening class introduces students to the concept of deep time—the idea that Earth’s history stretches back billions of years. Inspired by James Hutton’s groundbreaking thinking, students explore how slow, everyday processes like erosion, sedimentation, and volcanic activity shape the planet over immense spans of time. By examining the principle that “the present is the key to the past,” students begin to shift from seeing Earth as changing quickly to understanding it as a dynamic system built gradually. The class centers on a powerful guiding question: How long would it take to build a mountain?
Class 3: Moving Continents — The Puzzle of Plate Tectonics
In this class, students explore the idea that Earth’s continents are not fixed, but constantly in motion. Through the work of Alfred Wegener, they examine the theory of continental drift and the ancient supercontinent Pangaea, discovering why landmasses appear to fit together like puzzle pieces. Students also learn how Wegener’s ideas were initially dismissed, only to be validated decades later with new evidence, highlighting how scientific understanding evolves over time. Along the way, they begin to connect these shifting plates to real-world phenomena like earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain formation, seeing Earth as an active and ever-changing system.
Class 5: Rocks & Fossils — Reading Earth’s Past
In this class, students explore how rocks and fossils work together to reveal Earth’s history. Building on their understanding that rocks are constantly changing, they examine how certain rocks—especially sedimentary layers—can preserve traces of ancient life. Through the discoveries of Mary Anning, students investigate how fossils provide evidence of extinct organisms and long-term change over time.
Students also begin to look more closely at what rocks are made of by exploring mineral properties, including hardness. Using the Mohs hardness scale, they compare how different minerals resist scratching, learning that not all rocks behave the same under pressure and erosion. This adds another layer to their understanding, showing how the physical properties of rocks influence what gets preserved and what wears away over time.
By the end, students see rocks not just as materials, but as records—holding clues about environments, life forms, and events from millions of years ago. This class connects physical Earth processes with biological history, showing how the planet’s surface acts as both a stage and an archive of life.
Class 7: Earthquakes — Measuring a Moving Planet
In this class, students investigate how and why earthquakes occur as a result of shifting tectonic plates beneath Earth’s surface. Through the work of Charles Richter, they learn how scientists developed ways to measure the magnitude of earthquakes, while also recognizing the difference between numerical measurement and human experience. Students explore why, despite advances in technology, earthquakes remain difficult to predict with precision, highlighting the limits of scientific knowledge. The lesson reinforces the idea that Earth is constantly in motion, sometimes in ways that are sudden, powerful, and still not fully understood.
Class 2: Inside the Earth - Learning What We Cannot See
In this class, students journey beneath Earth’s surface to uncover its hidden layers—the crust, mantle, and core. It goes beyond most elementary science classes that end with identifying and labeling, and instead, it moves to understanding the underlying forces. Building on the work of scientist Inge Lehmann, they explore how seismic waves from earthquakes revealed that Earth is not solid all the way through, but instead has a complex internal structure, including a distinct inner core. Students are introduced to the idea of scientific inference—how scientists use indirect evidence to understand things they cannot directly observe.
Class 4: The Rock Cycle — Can Rocks Change Their Identity?
In this class, students revisit James Hutton’s ideas to explore how rocks are not fixed, but constantly changing over time. They learn to distinguish between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks while understanding that these are not permanent categories, but stages within an ongoing cycle. Through processes like erosion, heat, pressure, and melting, students see how one type of rock can transform into another, sometimes multiple times over millions of years. This class reinforces the idea of Earth as a dynamic system, where even something as solid as a rock is part of a continuous process of change.
Class 6: Volcanoes — Earth’s Explosive Energy
This class dives into the powerful forces beneath Earth’s surface that drive volcanic eruptions. Inspired by the work of Katia Krafft, students examine how magma rises, transforms into lava, and erupts in different ways depending on the type of volcano. They investigate shield, composite, and cinder cone volcanoes while considering how pressure, temperature, and gas content influence each eruption. Alongside the science, students also reflect on humanity’s enduring fascination with these dangerous natural events, exploring why people are drawn to study—and even get close to—such destructive power.
Class 8: Climate Systems — Why Earth’s Climate Changes Over Time
This class explores how Earth’s climate is shaped by complex, interconnected systems operating over vast timescales. Through the work of Milutin Milankovitch, students examine how subtle changes in Earth’s orbit and tilt can trigger major climate shifts, including ice ages. They investigate the dynamic interactions between land, oceans, and the atmosphere, recognizing how these systems influence one another in both gradual and dramatic ways. By comparing short-term weather patterns with long-term climate trends, students begin to understand climate as a system that evolves over time rather than something static or fixed.
