Grades 9-12
How Deep is Deep?
Dive down, down, and down a whole lot more—until you've traveled 2,400 meters to the sea floor. Can you picture how deep that really is? Compare it with the height of famous landmarks, and you will.
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One REVEL Teacher, Many Monkeys Fists
What are "monkey's fists" doing out at sea? This type of seaman's knot is being used to deploy deep sea thermometers. Find out if this teacher AND her fists get to travel to the ocean floor.
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Cindy Lee Van Dover
For oceanographers, the work they do at sea is just the beginning. Learn more about the discoveries made by one scientist who completed more than 100 dives to the sea floor.
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Case Study: Fossil Microbes on Mars?
A meteorite that escaped from Mars 16 million years ago was found recently in Antarctica. Does it, or doesn't it, hold evidence that proves the existence of life on the red planet?
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Case Study: Neutrino Observatories
Update your image of astronomers. Today they spend most of their time peering into computer screens rather than through the eyepiece of a telescope. Learn what this new vantage point has gained them.
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Profile: Cecilia Payne and the Composition of the Stars
What are the stars made of? At 25, Cecilia Payne answered this fundamental question in her Ph.D. thesis. Her pioneering work also made it possible to read a star's surface temperature.
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Profile: Ernst Chladni and Rocks from the Sky
Today, we accept the notion that enormous rocks exist within our solar system and that some of them fall to Earth. A little over 200 years ago, though, this idea garnered skepticism and ridicule.
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Case Study: The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
At this distance in time and space, can we prove that the universe was created with a single explosion? See how scientists have detected a faint remnant glow that supports the Big Bang theory.
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Case Study: John Michell And Black Holes
Imagine gravity so strong that even light is contained by its force. When a country parson first described black holes in 1783, the concept was so ahead of its time that it was mostly ignored.
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Case Study: Gerard Kuiper and the Trans-Neptunian Comet Belt
A dusty snowball orbiting the Sun, trailing gas and dust as it melts—a poetic and highly accurate way to describe a comet. Find out how these solar snowballs take their places around the Sun.
