unit 4

UNIT 4

Weeks 10, 11, 12. The Hydrosphere. Assignment 1: Network Montana ESS activities due by end of unit. Assignment 2: begin discussion questions at beginning of unit. Assignment 3: Unit 4 extension due at end of week 12, Sunday, December 5, 1999.

You will have three weeks to complete this unit. Your first assignment is to evaluate the Expert Level "Running Water" activity and one other activity of your choice at the Network Montana ESS site.

I have additional background information posted at my physical geography class web site: (http://wind.cc.whecn.edu/~gnelson/physgeog/unitsix.htm ), including graphics that may load slowly, depending on your system. These can be downloaded during a slack time, saved, and viewed at your convenience. Feel free to explore this site. Additional background material can be obtained from any physical geology or physical geography textbook or an advanced book from the library.

You do not need to turn in formal answers to these activities, only a written summary posted to the class discussion area at MSULink. In this summary, evaluate the activity: was it interactive, informative, doable, and fun? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

Your second assignment is to log on to the appropriate folder at MSULink at the beginning the seventh week, and start the discussion of the questions posted there:

1) Water has the ability to exist in three states at Earth Surface conditions: solid, liquid, and vapor. Changing from one state to the other involves storage or release of energy; discuss the importance of these energy - matter exchanges to hydrosphere processes.

2) Discuss what you think controls patterns of energy - water exchanges in the hydrosphere.

This discussion question is a bit deceptive - it reads very much like an earlier question regarding "patterns." This is intentional; the focus here is patters of energy-water exchanges, which relates to the "patterns of weather" question. Although related, the two are distinct and important enough to consider separately. Are there patterns to water-energy exchanges? What are the patterns? What controls the patterns? What environmental spheres do these exchanges involve?

By the start of the eleventh week, you should have some ideas about how you would write an extension activity that would help your students use the internet to investigate some aspect of the hydrosphere system: streams and rivers, runoff, ocean currents and temperatures, groundwater, and so on. Write up this extension activity (see Chapter 5, "How to Build and Extension") and submit it by the end of unit four; turn in as an .html document if you can, as a word processing document if you don't yet do html. I will work with you if you would like to explore the possibilities of using html.

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