Here you will find resources to help educators and their students use several present-day distributions of minerals, rock formations and fossils to help figure out the distribution of continents; construct a map showing the position of continents 250 million years ago by reversing the present direction of plate motion; recognize a convergence of presently widely scattered minerals, rock formation and fossils when all the continents where part of Pangea; compare present average community motions with that of the past 250 million years by calculating the average yearly rate of motion over the last 250 million years; describe the context in which the hypothesis of continental drift was proposed and why it was subjected to criticism; show that your community has moved through different ecological regions over time.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students use maps to examine the distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes to the location of plate boundaries; explain the location, nature and cause of volcanic arcs in terms of plate tectonics; explain the location, nature and cause of hot spots; explain how plate-tectonic processes have caused continents to grow through geologic time; explain how plate-tectonic processes produce landforms; explain how plate tectonics can affect the interior of a continent.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to construct a solar water heater and determine its maximum energy output; Construct a simple anemometer to measure wind speeds in your community; Evaluate the use of the Sun and the wind to reduce the use of nonrenewable energy resources; Understand how systems based upon renewable energy resources reduce our consumption of nonrenewable resources.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to design investigations into the porosity and permeability of an oil reservoir; Understand factors that control the volume and rate of production in oil and gas fields; Explore the physical relationships between natural gas, oil, and water in a reservoir; Understand why significant volumes of oil and gas cannot be recovered and are left in the ground; Use this knowledge to understand the variability in estimates of remaining oil and gas resources; Appreciate the importance of technological advances in maximizing energy resources.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to recognize the overwhelming dependence of today’s society on petroleum; Graph changes in domestic oil production and foreign imports to predict future needs and trends; Understand why oil and gas production have changed in the United States over time; Describe the distribution of oil and gas fields across the United States; Understand the origin of petroleum and natural gas; Investigate the consumption of oil and natural gas in your community.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to examine one of the environmental impacts of using coal; Understand how the use of fossil fuels relates to one of Earth’s major geochemical cycles—the carbon cycle; Understand the meaning of pH; Understand how weather systems and the nature of bedrock geology and soil affect the impact of acid rain; Determine ways that energy resources affect your community; Analyze the positive and negative effects of energy use on communities.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to investigate the production and consumption of coal in the United States; Investigate how coal sources are explored; Understand methods of coal mining; Determine how coal is used in your state; Evaluate possible practices to conserve coal resources.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to classify grades of coal using physical properties; Interpret a map of coal distribution in the United States; Understand that fossils fuels represent solar energy stored as chemical energy;Understand how coal forms; Be able to explain in your own words why coal is a nonrenewable resource.

Here you will find resources to help educators and their students to compare the use of energy resources for electricity in the United States to other countries; Identify the major energy sources used to produce electricity in the United States and your state; Identify trends and patterns in electricity generation; Understand the difference between electric power and electric energy; Be able to describe commonly used methods of generating electric power.