Objectives:

Upon completion of this activity, students will:

• Know that the sun’s energy arrives as light with a range of wavelengths, consisting of visible light, infrared radiation (heat), and ultraviolet radiation. That light interacts with matter by transmission (including refraction), absorption or scattering (including reflection).
• Know that energy, enters an ecosystem as sunlight. It is transferred by producers into chemical energy through photosynthesis. That energy then passes from organism to organism in food webs.
• Define, “What is sea ice?” and communicate its value/role in climate, ecosystems and in research.
• Recognize how the history of the earth’s climate is studied via ice core research and that technology used to gather data enhances accuracy and allows for analyzing and quantifying results.
• Use the tools, including and techniques, of scientific inquiry, to gather, analyze and interpret data including, graphing, reasoning, drawing conclusions and communicating findings.
• Think critically and logically to make relationships between evidence and explanation, as well as communicate procedures and outcomes.
• Analyze and understand that water, which covers the majority of the earth's surface, circulates through the crust, oceans, and atmosphere in what is known as the "water cycle." Water evaporates from the earth's surface, rises and cools as it moves to higher elevations, condenses as rain or snow, and falls to the surface where it collects in lakes, oceans, soil, and in rocks underground.
• Understand that science and technology are reciprocal. Science helps drive technology, as it addresses questions that demand more sophisticated instruments and provides principles for better instrumentation and technique. Technology is essential to science, because it provides instruments and techniques that enable observations of objects and phenomena that are otherwise unobservable due to factors such as quantity, distance, location, size, and speed. Technology also provides tools for investigations, inquiry, and analysis.