BSU-EarthView

Teachers of Teachers

2011-07-28T17:28:00.001-04:00

EarthView Team: Dr. Vernon Domingo, Natalie "EarthView Wrangler" Regan,
Rosalie "Globe Lady" Sokol, Dr. James Hayes-Bohanan

The photograph taken above is from the farewell dinner marking the end of EarthView's third year and the graduation of Natalie Regan, who served as EarthView's "Wrangler" from the program's inception. Most school visits over the past three years -- reaching close to 30,000 students in small groups -- have involved all four members of the team, and the rest of the team will miss the student worker whose dedication, creativity, and strong sense of organization has made everything possible. Upon graduation, she is pursuing opportunities to apply her geography education, mainly in the areas of regional planning and transportation.

The rest of the team brings the better part of a century of teaching experience to the program, and all of us are involved in various ways in the teaching and development of geography teachers. The "Globe Lady" Rosalie Sokol began her career as a middle-school French teacher, and switched to geography after completing an intensive training program sponsored by National Geographic in the 1980s. She retired from full-time teaching in Tantasqua Regional Middle School just as the EarthView program was getting started, and so continues to connect with students of all ages.

Dr. Vernon Domingo previously taught geography at the high school level in his home country of South Africa before coming to the United States for graduate school. He has taught in the Department of Geography at Bridgewater State University (formerly College) for 24 years. About a decade ago, he began teaching a course for future teachers, entitled Geography Methods and Materials, in which he draws on his extensive knowledge of the many tools -- conventional and digital -- available for the teaching of geography.

James "Dr. Java" Hayes-Bohanan began teaching geography as a graduate student in 1986, and became a full-time faculty member at BSU in 1997. When the department modified its program for future educators in 2005, he began teaching a course entitled "Geography Frameworks," based on the national benchmarks that have been established for geography educators at various grade levels. Students completing this course learn to apply those standards to a wide

BSU students majoring in elementary education, special education, or early childhood education must also complete a major in the liberal arts, and those who do so in geography complete both of these courses. They are also available to students pursuing the minor in secondary education, but those students are prohibited from majoring in geography, so very few of them complete these courses.

In addition to the students we reach directly through EarthView programs and university courses, members of the EarthView team are actively involved in workshops and institutes for in-service teachers -- both those already trained in geography and those who are teaching geography content but do not have geography licensure.

Update: The team gathered again in September, at the joyous occasion of Natalie's wedding. Her charming groom joined the team just for the photo op!

Kermadec Quake

2011-07-06T19:57:00.002-04:00

29.312°S, 176.204°W
(Note decimal degrees; see lat/long article for information about conversion. How many degrees is this from your school?)

Orange, yellow, and green are closer to surface;
blue and violet are deeper than 150km
see map page for more details and views

Thanks to our local paper, the Brockton Enterprise, for letting us know about the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck the very remote Kermadec Islands earlier today (although it was already "tomorrow" where the quake occurred, just a few degrees east of the International Date Line. (The Globe and Mail provides just a few more details.)

The remote outpost of New Zealand houses only a weather station (currently 67 degrees F with a light breeze) and a hostel for visiting scientists. It is almost 1,000 kilometers south of Tonga, the nearest "major" island and almost 1,200 kilometers northeast of Auckland. The earthquake is remote even from these islands, with Raoul Island, the nearest, over 100 kilometers away. (See EarthView blog posts about another remote New Zealand island, Tokelau.)

The quake occurred 44 kilometers below the surface, which leads the USGS tentatively to conclude that is is located in a normal fault within the downward-moving Pacific plate.

The map at right is among several interesting depictions of seismic activity in this remote area. It indicates that the area is seismically quite active, with thousands of mostly small events over the past twenty years. Although the depth of each event can vary according to many factors, in subduction zones of this kind, the tendency -- well-illustrated here -- is for shallow events to cluster near the fault line, with depth increasing with distance away from the advancing plate (in this case, westward as the denser Pacific Plate advances under the Australian Plate).

As with any major quake in a marine environment, tsunamis are a possibility, and in this case it appears that a 2.2-foot wave was the highest generated by the event.

Pan-American Highway Tour

2011-07-05T11:51:00.000-04:00

Geographers love transects, and we have shared several interesting examples with our EarthView audiences in the past couple years. A really quick one is taking place right now, as a three-person team is driving a single automobile along the entire 16,000-mile route of the Pan-American Highway.

Knowing that they started in Argentina and will follow a west-coast route all the way to Alaska, see if you can identify all the countries and major cities they will visit before checking the TDI-Panamericana web site to learn all the details.

This trek involves three drivers, 16,000 miles, 14 days, and a 2011 Volkswagen. EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan did something almost as crazy in 1985, involving two drivers (both geographers), 8,500 miles, 17 days, and a 1960 Volkswagen. Our top speed was 62 miles per hour, and we visited only two countries: about half of the states in the U.S. plus Baja California. It was the start of what eventually became the County Map Project.

Rumney Marsh Art

2011-06-30T09:24:00.000-04:00

The EarthView team very much enjoyed our visit to the Rumney Marsh Academy in May, where we found a school full of enthusiastic geography teachers and learners. We were delighted to receive a series of wonderful posters created by RMA students, who apparently were quite inspired by the EarthView experience! We will treasure them all, and decided to share just one example here on the blog.

Click to enlarge!

Neither Niña nor Niño

2011-06-24T19:00:00.002-04:00

The past six months or so have been punctuated by a series of extreme weather events in North America, from strong winter storms to rapid snow melt to tornadoes of unusual intensity, most recently in Massachusetts, far from their typical range.

Often such anomalies are ascribed to El Niño events -- accumulations of unusually warm water in the equatorial Pacific the prior December -- or La Niña, the opposite. According to NASA Science News, however, the 2011 events seem to result from an unusually free-wheeling jet stream, which in turn results from "La Nada" -- a lack of a strong Pacific temperature signal in either direction.

Not Just French

2011-06-17T00:24:00.000-04:00

The woman on the map below is not just French ... she's France!

It is one of several maps in the form of people, plants, or animals included in Maps Come Alive on the Streets of Salem blog.

Phil Cambell

2011-06-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

"Who is Phil Campbell?" That is a simple question with many answers, and an even better question is "Where is Phil Campbell?" The answer to that is northwest Alabama, more precisely at 34°21′N; 87°42′W.

And for the next few days, the question is "Where are the Phil Campbells?" To which the answer is "Phil Campbell." Got it?

Phil Campbell -- one of them, anyway -- was a railroad builder from England who was leading work crews in northwestern Alabama in the 1880s. A local business leader asked him to build a side track and depot, offering to name the town for him if he did so. The result is that Phil Campbell is the only town in Alabama to bear both the first and last name of an individual.

I first heard of the town of Phil Cambpell in 1995, when New York writer Phil Campbell organized a convention of 22 people named Phil Campbell in the town. Phil Campbell -- the writer and the town -- are in the news again this week.

In April of this year, the town of Phil Campbell experienced a devastating tornado as part of the 2011 Super Outbreak. At that time, the writer Phil Campbell and others were already planning another convention to take place in June. As reported on NPR Thursday, the Phil Cambells -- this time coming from all over the world -- have transformed their celebration into a relief effort.

The "I'm With Phil" project is restoring hope to a town some thought might need to be abandoned. It is amazing what these eighteen men (at least one Phyllis was planning to attend but is not in good health) are doing, united by nothing more than compassion, a sense of humor, and an unusual toponym.

Granite Valley Middle School in Monson -- June 17

2011-06-15T15:33:00.011-04:00

42° 06' 35" N
72° 19' 11" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView team will mark the end of our third year -- and the departure of our graduating EarthView Wrangler -- at Granite Valley Middle School in the town of Monson. This will be our westernmost appearance this year, though we were only a few arc-minutes east of Monson when we visited Sturbridge at the beginning of this week.

As many people in our region now know, it was just two weeks ago that the town of Monson was among the communities that suffered the most devastating property damage during the June 1 outbreak of tornadoes in western and central Massachusetts. Tragically, several lives were lost in the Springfield area, but good forecasting, communication, and cooperation prevented the human impact from being much greater.

The impact of losing so many homes and public buildings, however, is quite serious. The Monson Public Schools have been an integral part of the effort to bring the community together around the recovery effort.

Tornadoes occur rarely in Massachusetts, so when we were teaching EarthView audiences about the geography of tornadoes in April, we had no idea the subject would soon be so close to home. As reported on the EarthSky blog, NASA Landsat images reveal the scope of the damage, as a single path of heavy damage extends for a length of 39 miles, with a width up to a half mile.

Click image to enlarge.
Monson is near the eastern (right) edge of the image.

For centuries, the physical geography of Monson has influenced its history. Located in a region of abundant rainfall and high topographic relief (range of elevation), Monson was an ideal location for industry during the age of water power. As early as the late 1600s, mills in Monson produced a variety of products, ranging from lumber and woolens to hats and rifle barrels. Below the surface, local granite has been sufficient for the construction of many public buildings in town, with enough leftover for use throughout the Northeast.

Tantasqua Regional Jr. H.S. -- June 13

2011-06-13T06:50:00.002-04:00

42° 09' 24" N
72° 07' 44" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView team is delighted to be visiting Tantasqua Regional Junior High School in historic Sturbridge. As students there know, this is the school where the famous Globe Lady worked as a geography teacher before retiring and joining our team! EarthView has been to Tantasqua only once before, in 2008.

Weymouth -- June 3

2011-06-09T11:10:00.004-04:00

Abigail Adams Middle School
42° 13' 21" N
70° 56' 21" W
Academy Avenue Primary School
42° 13' 15" N
70° 56' 33" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView team enjoyed a day in Weymouth -- a town located about halfway between our home base and Boston. We set up EarthView at Abigail Adams Middle School, to provide programs to students from the Academy Avenue Primary School, who walked a few hundred yards to participate. The coordinates posted above -- based on the official address of each school -- can be used to determine the arc length the students covered.

We were delighted to have as special guests for the day Rep. James M. Murphy, who represents Weymouth in the Massachusetts Legislature, and his staff members, including an intern recently arrived from Ireland! Rep. Murphy and his staff exuded great enthusiasm for geography education. More importantly, so too did the students, teachers, and staff of the two schools. The enthusiasm for EarthView and geography was high throughout the day, and the students showed that they had been learning their geography concepts quite well!

We look forward to returning to Abigail Adams to do some more geography education with students, teachers, and Principle Dan Birolini, a former geography teacher who once took a course on the Geography of Africa with EarthView' team member Dr. Domingo!

Salem to Mongolia

2011-05-25T16:01:00.000-04:00

During our recent visit to the Rumney Marsh Academy in Revere, the EarthView team was pleased to meet science teacher Andrea Aeschlimann, who is about to embark on a remarkable humanitarian -- and geographic -- project. In the Salem to Mongolia project, she and a partner will deliver a wheelchair van to a community in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. As the map above suggests, the van will be sent by ship to London, and then driven the rest of the way, forming a transect of most of Eurasia. The trip is a chance to do some good and to learn a lot of geography on the way!

Quabbin Middle School

2011-05-24T18:57:00.000-04:00

42° 24' 07" N
72° 06' 47" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

For the third year in a row, EarthView will be at the Quabbin Regional School in Barre, where geography teacher Erin Stevens organizes an annual sleep-over for seventh graders. During the first four hours of the event, participants take turns visiting EarthView, among other fun programs throughout the building.

The regional school is named for the Quabbin Reservoir, which famously eliminated four towns in order to provide water to Boston.

Rumney Marsh Academy, Revere: May 20

2011-05-18T15:55:00.001-04:00

42º 24' 47" N
71º 00' 12" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

The Rumney Marsh Academy is located in Revere, a city of just under 6 square miles and just over 42,000 residents located on Cape Cod Bay just a few miles to the north of Boston's Logan Airport. The historic city of Revere is the birthplace of noted American author Horatio Alger.

The Rumney Marsh Academy is located on American Legion Parkway, less than a mile from the important wetland for which it is named. The Rumney Marsh is the largest wetland area on the north side of Boston. Coastal environments can change quite rapidly, especially where human settlements are close to the coastal environment. In the case of the Rumney Marsh, however, its general shape is roughly the same as it was over a century ago, according to the 1891 map shown below.

According to the Rumney Marsh Information Page hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, glaciers were involved in the formation of Rumney Marsh in three ways. First, a glacier deposited the sand that forms Revere Beach, separating the Marsh from the Atlantic Ocean and diverting the lower stretch of the Saugus River a bit northward. Second, outwash from melting glaciers carried much of the silt that forms the marsh. Finally, when glaciers retreated throughout the Northern Hemisphere about 10,000 years ago, sea levels rose throughout the world, in this case raising the ocean to just the right level for sediments in the Saugus River to be trapped in Rumney Marsh.

Learn more about the Rumney Marsh and its ecological importance from the Rumney Marsh Reservation page and from the page that identifies the marsh as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). The Rumney Marsh is a good place to see the influence (no pun intended) of tides.

Source: 1891 Sanborn Map

Where is the Center?

2011-05-18T08:16:00.000-04:00

One of our BSU geography students recently shared a story about the placement of a monument in Missouri that marks the population centroid of the United States. The story is told on EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan's Environmental Geography blog, in an article called Plato at the Center.

Tide's Up!

2011-05-15T09:26:00.000-04:00

Blondie's 1980 hit The Tide is High may no longer be as popular as it once was, but the EarthView team was still surprised to learn that many university students are not aware of what real tides are.

Cape Cod Low Tide

Tides are regular fluctuations in the water level of oceans that result from the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. Water levels typically rise and fall twice each day, with the difference between high and low tide ranging from a half meter in some locations to as many at 15 meters in the extreme case of the Bay of Fundy. Typical ranges are on the order of a meter or two. Learn all about tides from the Tides and Water Levels page at NOAA's Ocean Service. See NOAA's ocean education page for many more tutorials, games, and lesson plans about the oceans.

High and low tides do not arrive at the same time each day, nor do they arrive at all coastal locations at the same time. Even places that are very close together can experience tides at very different times because of the shape of the coastal environment. The timing of tides is very predictable, though, so newspapers in coastal areas usually publish expected high and low tides for several days at a time. The web site Salt Water Tides allows internet users to look up tidal charts for many U.S. locations up to one year in advance. These charts are reliable for the timing of tides, but the magnitude of high and low tides can be affected by many other factors at a local or regional scale.

TIDE CHARTS THROUGHOUT UNITED STATES

Return to Wakefield -- May 13

2011-05-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Woodville School (where we are presenting EarthView)
42º 29' 53" N
71º 03' 04" W

Walton School (which sent second-grade classes on a but to see EarthView at Woodville)

42º 30' 23" N
71º 05' 15" W

Wakefield High School (which is sending an oceanography/astronomy field trip to EarthView)

42º 29' 46" N
71º 03' 07" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

Note: two the schools are at adjacent addresses on Farm Street in Wakefield. The are only a few arc-seconds apart, in both latitude and longitude. Compare this distance to the distance from Farm Street to the Walton School on Davidson Road.

View Larger Map

The EarthView team enjoyed giving first- and second-grade students from the Woodville and Walton Schools an unforgettable view of the earth! We were also able to building on the lessons Wakefield High School students have been learning about latitude and longitude (see link above), plate tectonics, and the formation of the earth. We also learned about GPS by having several high school students pretend to be satellites and a ground receiver.

All of the Wakefield schools we visited this year are doing a great job with geography -- students at all grade levels showed great interest in their world! The Walton School home page features the nifty geographic clip art shown at right!

GPS: Where We Are

2011-05-11T15:25:00.002-04:00

Many people now have GPS receivers in their cars -- they are particularly handy in New England, where many roads and boundaries were laid out centuries ago. The commercial versions have become so handy and simple to use that they can seem almost like magic, and it is easy to forget the complex array of geospatial and aeronautic technologies that make their operation possible.

EarthView allows students to consider GPS from the point of view of the satellites. This blog post is intended to provide further insight into how the systems work.

Source: WikiMedia

This image represents the 24 satellites used in the now-familiar system known as GPS, or Global Positioning System (public-domain image courtesy of WikiMedia). The earth is shown in the center, with a black arrow constantly pointing to a position 45 degrees north of the equator. The blue rings represent the six orbits, in each of which four satellites circle the planet twice each day.

The time scale is greatly exaggerated, with 30 seconds representing a 24-hour period. The spatial scale, however, is fairly accurate -- Earth is 8,000 miles in diameter, and the satellites orbit about 12,000 miles above the surface.

Dashed, green lines connect the point on the ground to the satellites that would be in a direct line of site from that point. The image illustrates how the number of satellites "visible" at any one time varies from 6 to 12. As explained in more detail on the Smithsonian GPS page, a minimum of four is needed to identify a unique location.

Each GPS satellite is a one-ton, 17-foot, solar-powered vehicle that carries an atomic clock and follows a precisely defined orbit. With just 50 watts of transmitting power, the satellite constantly sends out its location and the precise time. A ground instrument can use the time to determine how far it is from a particular satellite, but this information alone does not define a location, as the direction from the satellite is not known. By calculating the distances from four satellites, however, the overlapping distances define a unique point. Greater numbers of satellites allow for correction of measurement errors.

The GPS technology defines where a receiver is; this is combined with sophisticated geographic information systems (GIS) and routing technology to allow for on-the-spot calculations of pathways from one's current location to a desired destination. Many professional geographers, by the way, were reluctant to use GPS technology because of our love for tradtional, paper maps. As the technology has become more sophisticated -- and convenient -- more geographers have embraced it ... but tend to use it in combination with "real" maps as well!

LEARN MORE AT GPS.GOV

Upcoming EarthView Visits

2011-05-05T09:05:00.004-04:00

The following is a partial list of EarthView programs taking place in coming months (revised May 5, 2011). All town and city names are in Massachusetts, unless otherwise indicated. We are currently accepting requests for 2011-2012 reservations. Please see the EarthView web site for requirements and contact information.

For both pedagogic and security reasons, participation at school programs is limited to the students themselves, unless prior arrangements are made for visitors. Certain EarthView events are open to the public, as indicated below.

Friday, May 6
St. Joseph Elementary, Needham

Friday, May 13
TBA Elementary, Wakefield

Friday, May 20
Thomas Carroll School, Peabody

Thursday, May 26
Quabbin Regional Middle School (overnight)

Friday, June 3
Abigail Adams Middle, Weymouth

Friday, June 10
TBA North Shore

Thursday, June 16
Granite Valley Middle School, Monson

Friday, June 17
Tantasqua Jr. High School, Fiskdale

Wednesday, September 7 PUBLIC EVENT
Worcester State University
Theme Semester Kick-Off: Worcester in the World

Thursday & Friday, October 6 & 7
North Andover Middle School
EarthView programs by day; Geography night in between!

St. Joseph Elementary, Needham: May 6

2011-05-04T01:37:00.001-04:00

42º 16' 58" N
71º 14' 04" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

EarthView will be at St. Joseph Elementary School in Needham on May 6, and is delighted to have been mentioned in the "Looking Ahead" section of the Principal's Corner online!

The EarthView team was in Needham just about a year ago, at the Eliot School. Students can use the lat/long article above and our Eliot School blog post to determine the angular distances between the two schools. For example, which school is farther north, and by how many degrees, minutes, and seconds?

www.northshoremaimages.com

The history of Needham includes some interesting geography. As with many areas at a similar distance outside of Boston, its economy during early English settlement was almost entirely in agriculture, giving way first to tanning and lumbering. Imagine forestry as a significant industry 250 years ago, with cattle grazing over much of the unforested area, and those cattle supplying a noxious industry involved in the tanning of leather for shoe factories elsewhere in the region. A century later -- by the 1850s -- a knitting industry had emerged, owing in part to the migration of expert knitters from England. We say "in part," because it certainly appeared to those involved that the industry persisted in Needham just because certain skilled workers had come to the area. For geographers, though, this is not a final answer, but rather the beginning of questions: why did expert knitters move here, rather than some other location? Individual choice is often important, but so, too, are factors such as climate, available sources of energy, and available raw materials.

Moving forward another century, the economic geography of Needham was part of a dynamic area that many geographers have studied. The 128 Corridor, as it came to be known, far enough from Boston to have relatively less expensive land for the building of office parks (some of the nation's first) and small factories. It is close enough to Boston and Cambridge, however, to draw on the intellectual and technical expertise available at a variety of institutions, particularly the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

Team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan makes the journey from Bridgewater to Needham about once each month, to visit Trader Joe's, which is an interesting grocery store for a geographer to visit. In addition to a vaguely Polynesian decor, the store offers many lessons in the geography of food, as people come to the store seeking particular combinations of local, exotic, and healthy foods. It also includes a small but diverse section customers can explore the geography of coffee and tea.

The store is also a very interesting example of economic geography. Not only does it manage to attract shoppers from a much wider range than most grocery stores, but the store's management also takes a very different approach to the economic geography of the inside of the store. In grocery stores, products compete for shelf space. Certain areas have higher value than others, based on proximity to the checkout lines, height relative to eye level (adult and child might be different), and other factors. All of this is true in Trader Joe's, but the space is managed very differently. In a big store with a lot of shelves, it makes sense for some products to be offered in many sizes and varieties, just to take up space. Most stores let suppliers do this, so that a single category -- such as soft drinks, chips, or cereal -- can take up an entire aisle. Trader Joe's does something quite different: the shelving is limited, so its value (the "rent") is high, and each kind of product will be offered in relatively few varieties (compared to big stores, anyway) and very few sizes (usually only one).

Activity: When you visit grocery stores or other retail establishments, pay attention to the arrangement of products on shelves and racks. How can you tell which areas of the store have the highest value? The lowest? How do organizing strategies vary among stores?

Royal Wedding Geography

2011-05-02T13:41:00.002-04:00

Photo: HappyLand Royal Wedding Set

Our most recent EarthView program coincided with rather a fancy wedding ceremony in London, as Prince William married his long-time girlfriend Catherine (Kate) Middleton. Not since William's parents married in 1981 has there been so much attention to a wedding ceremony. The significance of the event goes far beyond its importance for the happy couple, of course. The latest royal wedding is full of geographic implications and raises many interesting questions students can explore, starting with: Why is the couple now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge?

Two other geography blogs have described a number of geography lessons to be explored. "Millie the Geographer," writing on her What I Taught in Geography This Week blog, begins with several examples related to the geography of tourism. (Yes, tourism has a geography, and the Association of American Geographers even has a specialty group for its study!) The blog post goes on to include implications for retail sales and the importance of social media, which are also a growing area of geographic inquiry. Related to political geography, the blog discusses the relevance of the wedding to public opinion regarding the monarchy. Finally, the availability of "copycat" royal weddings in China is cited as an example of the cultural geography of Westernization.

In The Geography of the Royal Wedding, the Living Geography blog mentions some of the same themes, including the specific example of retail impacts shown above. This blog also provides links to several geographic aspects of the wedding day itself, such as maps of the procession and weather at the time of the ceremony. It also includes a link to an interesting series of cartograms about the UK, which in turn helps to explain some of the often-confusing terminology related to the name of the country in which all of this is taking place.

The list of invited and attending guests has also been quite interesting. One gallery of royal wedding guests lists just a few of the "in" and "out" celebrities and dignitaries -- most notably President and First Lady Obama -- and provides some interesting details about their status. Several instructive geography activities could be built around a longer -- though still selective -- list of attendees from the wedding's official web site.

Using the various categories of guests in this list, consider the following options:

1. Using a detailed map of the United Kingdom, map as many of the "Members of the Royal Family" in attendance as possible. What parts of the UK are most represented? Least?

2. Using a map of the world, map the attendees who are members of monarchies outside of the UK. What current monarchies are missing?

3. The "Dignitaries" includes officials from other countries. How many of these are members of the Commonwealth (of current and former British colonies and territories)?

4. What religious sects and denominations are represented by the clergy and other religious leaders present? In what parts of the world are adherents of these religions found?

Tornadoes

2011-04-29T07:25:00.001-04:00

Tragically, tornadoes are very much in the news this week. We will have more about this topic on the EarthView blog soon, but meanwhile we want to let teachers, parents and students know about two important resources for understanding the geography of these storms.

U.S. Tornado Climatology is a report from NOAA that explains why tornadoes are more likely in certain places and at certain times of the day or year.

The Tornado History Project is a geographic database of 54,000 tornado maps, covering U.S. events from 1950 to 2010.

W.H. Galvin Middle School, Canton -- April 29

2011-04-28T07:52:00.001-04:00

42° 10' 05" N71° 07' 57" W

Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView team is pleased to be meeting with seventh graders at the William H. Galvin Middle School in Canton, where one of our own BSU Geography alumnae is part of the excellent social studies team. For some reason, we have not included W.H. Galvin in the blog previously, but we do know that Galvin students are always well prepared to show off what they know about geography!

Canton, Massachusetts is named as the result of an interesting but common geographic misconception. Originally known by the Algonquin name Punkapoag and later part of the town of Stoughton, it became a separate town in 1797. At that time Elijah Dunbar suggested that it be named for Canton, China, which he thought was on the other side of the earth. The common misconception that North Americans could "dig to China" was thus immortalized in the name of the town.

In reality, Canton, China -- now known as Guangzhou -- cannot be on the opposite side of the earth from Canton, Massachusetts, as both are in the northern hemisphere. Guangzhou is at 23°N and 113°E, so it is close to the correct longitude, but nowhere near the correct latitude to be considered the antipode.

Learn more about true antipodes from Dr. Hayes-Bohanan's antipode article on Environmental Geography. Find the true antipode of Canton -- or anyplace else -- at the Antipode Map web site.

From here ... to there?

Canton is known for many other things, including two factories built by Paul Revere (one for gun powder and another for brass and copper rolling), its famous viaduct, and Dunbar's founding of the oldest choral society in the United States, which remained in Stoughton.

As a former location of Equal Exchange, Canton is the first of many places that EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan had a chance to visit a coffee company!

Biggest Seas

2011-04-26T09:14:00.001-04:00

One of the major lessons of EarthView is that "Earth" would more appropriately be called "Water," since more than 2/3 of the planet is covered with water -- at an average depth of about 3 kilometers! The Pacific Ocean, of course, is the largest body of water, and also the oldest, with the crust in some areas is 200 million years old. (Pretty old, but less than one-tenth the age of the planet!)

Writing for Our Amazing Planet, Remy Melina has created a countdown of the ten largest oceans and seas, with imagery and fun facts about each. Which one do you suppose is shown above? What bodies of water do you think made the top-ten cut?

New Islands Discovered!

2011-04-25T17:25:00.000-04:00

Gurupi Islands -- Google image from CoastalCare.org

The title above is attention-grabbing and a little inaccurate ... on purpose. Read the details on Dr. Hayes-Bohanan's Environmental Geography blog.

State House Coverage

2011-04-11T08:45:00.001-04:00

The EarthView team has had the privilege of setting up EarthView in the Massachusetts State House twice - first in June 2010 and most recently this April 4. Each time, students from the Geography Club at Quabbin Middle School in Barre have been part of the effort, asking visitors questions about their knowledge of geography.

Those visitors have included a variety of state senators and representatives and their staff members, as well as tourists who happened to be visiting the State House (a grand, historic building that attracts visitors from near and far).

Boston Globe photographer David Ryan was fascinated by the giant globe filling Nurses' Hall, and enjoyed photographing EarthView and the people in and around it. In addition to a cover photo on the next day (click at left to enlarge, but the digital version remains a bit fuzzy), two short articles appeared in the paper. John Ellement's Global Silhouette piece features two of our BSU students showing the world to legislative staff. Saving the World for Geography by Katherine Landergine features one of our Massachusetts Geographic Alliance colleagues who ensured that the hand-painted globe did not scrape against a marble banister. Her article also mentions SB 182, which Senator Brewer's introduced to promote geography education in the Commonwealth.

SciGirls Expo - April 9

2011-04-09T05:31:00.004-04:00

41° 44' 30" N
70° 37' 20" W

See the Steve Morse lat/long finder to look up other addresses, or read the EarthView lat/long article for much more graticular information

The EarthView team is delighted to be part of the SciGirls Expo being held at Mass Maritime. The campus is an excellent model of innovation in sustainability, with many leading-edge projects to reduce greenhouse emissions through the use of wind, geothermal, solar, and tidal power!

The Expo is meant to cultivate another great source of power: the mind! High school girls considering STEM -- that is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math -- careers will be learning about all kinds of career possibilities in science, including geography.

McCall Middle School, Winchester: April 8

2011-04-07T19:47:00.000-04:00

42° 27' 01" N
71° 08' 05" W
See the Steve Morse lat/long finder to look up other addresses, or read the EarthView lat/long article for much more graticular information!

The EarthView Team is visiting McCall Middle School in Winchester, one of several adjacent or neighboring "W" towns just north of Boston. We have already been in adjacent Woburn, for example. The Massachusetts city/town map reveals that it is possible to travel considerable distances north and west of Boston without ever leaving places that start with either "W" or "M."

Winchester's early development was fostered by the 1803 opening of the Middlesex Canal, whose path through the town seems largely to have been obscured, except in a few locations along Palmer Street. Geographers tend to be fascinated by canals, which are like rivers in some ways and railroads in others.

Geobiblio Stunt

2011-04-07T10:08:00.000-04:00

The Library History Buff blog recently posted what it calls the Best Library Cover Story Ever. It is a good geography story, too! It is the story of a very special letter mailed in 1952.

State House: April 4

2011-04-03T22:04:00.001-04:00

The EarthView team is pleased to be returning to the Massachusetts State House on April 4. The photo to the left is from our previous visit in June 2010. We met a number of enthusiastic legislators, staffers, and tourists during that visit, and we are looking forward to another great day in the People's House.

We will be in the State House from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Throughout the day, geography students from Bridgewater State University will be on hand, along with students from the British School of Boston, Quabbin Middle School, and teachers from the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance.

Many thanks to Senator Steve Brewer of Barre for organizing this visit, and to the other champions of geography education in the Massachusetts General Court.

Mass Geo Blog

2011-04-03T19:00:00.000-04:00

When we are not in our own community spreading the good news of geography, members of the EarthView team enjoy visiting other parts of the global community. We know that we are very fortunate that our work and leisure have taken us to many places -- more than 50 countries among the three "senior" members of the team.

Dr. Domingo is currently adding at least two countries to that total, as he spends part of his academic sabbatical teaching and learning about water resources in Malaysia and Cambodia. As time and internet connectivity allow, he has been posting short updates on the blog of the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance, one of our Project EarthView partners.

The Mass Geo blog is not just about our travels, though: the main purpose of the blog is to provide a place for educators to share ideas about the teaching of geography in Massachusetts. We therefore invite all of the teachers and volunteers we meet through Project EarthView to follow the Mass Geo blog for news, lesson ideas, and -- yes -- the insights of traveling geographers!

What's the Best Projection?

2011-03-19T21:44:00.001-04:00

See National Atlas.gov

As geographers -- especially geographers who travel with a giant globe -- we are often asked this question. What kind of map, people want to know, will eliminate distortion?

Because the earth is nearly spherical in shape, a globe is the only way to represent it without distorting shape, area, distance, and/or direction. Any effort to preserve one of these four properties will require a loss in one or more of the others. Therefore, the "best" projection will vary, depending upon which of these characteristics is most important. As a guide for sailing a ship, direction is extremely important, for example. Unfortunately, the projection that best achieves this -- the Mercator -- has become one of the most popular for world maps, even though it grossly distorts area, shape, and distance!

NationalAtlas.gov is the online version
of the official National Atlas of the US,
first printed in 1874.

The National Atlas article Map Projections: From Spherical Earth to Flat Map is the best place to start learning about the trade-offs among the various projections. Further detail is provided by the U.S. Geological Survey article Map Projections, which includes a series of tables that identifies the suitability of various projections according to the properties preserved, the scale at which each is appropriate, and the appropriate use of each. Both the National Atlas and USGS articles include helpful glossaries, and describes the trade-offs that apply to globes, as well as to flat maps.

EarthView is nearly unique (duique, as Dr. Hayes-Bohanan says, because there are two of these special globes in the world), so its advantages and disadvantages differ from ordinary globes. Compared to most ordinary globes, EarthView:

has a much larger scale, and therefore more detail
has a much larger scale, but still not nearly as detailed as a typical highway or city map
is hand-painted, so features are more vivid
is hand-painted, which introduced a few small errors (ask the team where they are!)
is hand-painted, so it has to be treated with extra care
is very tall, so much of the northern hemisphere is hard to see from outside
is very tall, so some things are best understood from a distance
is very tall, so it does not fit in most classrooms or homes
is not round on the bottom, so Antarctica is flattened (and is not visible from the outside)
has a zipper on the International Date Line, which is just cool
has three air holes in the top, and a fan on the side -- also cool
rests on the South Pole, so it does not properly show the tilt of the Earth's axis
can be viewed from inside, so the entire planet is visible at the same time (except whatever is right behind your head)
can be viewed from inside, so that east appears on the left and west on the right (north is still up, though)
can be viewed from inside, so it looks like stained glass (see Mapparium in Boston for a globe made of real stained glass)
is a physical globe -- whereas most ordinary globes are combined physical/political -- so country boundaries are not visible (except island nations, of course)

One of the most noticeable differences between EarthView and other maps and globes is that in EarthView (or outside of EarthView) we can more clearly see that the Pacific Ocean is full of islands -- many of them inhabited. For example, French Polynesia is an "overseas collectivity" of France with over 100 islands and nearly 300,000 people, and is just one of many clusters of archipelagos in the vast Pacific Ocean.

The comparative visibility of Pacific Islands is a function of both projection and scale. On many flat maps of the world, the Atlantic Ocean is centered, with the Pacific pushed to the edges. On both maps and globes, a typical Pacific Island -- if shown to scale -- is comparable in size to the dot of a letter i, and therefore very difficult to represent. Even on EarthView, some artistic license has been used to make the islands more visible. Though the islands themselves are drawn to scale, the shallow waters around them generally appear much larger than would be proportional.

Learn more about the Pacific islands from two previous posts on this blog -- A Vast Ocean and Survivor Islands. We also recommend the interactive Map South Pacific site for finding maps of specific regions and archipelagos and the CIA's Oceania map (PDF format) for an overview.

Carver Middle High School - March 25

2011-03-19T17:10:00.000-04:00

41° 53' 31" N
70° 45' 11" W
See the Steve Morse lat/long finder to look up other addresses, or read the EarthView lat/long article for much more graticular information!

As Principal Scott Knief recently wrote, the school's mission includes helping students to meet “the changing needs and increased expectations of our town, our state, and our global society.” EarthView's return to Carver -- this is our third or fourth visit -- is intended to help further this goal. By being more aware of how they fit into a global context, students in Carver -- or anywhere -- will be better prepared for future careers and participation in civic life.

It seems that recent events -- especially in North Africa and Japan -- are reminding us all of the importance of those global connections. We encourage students to examine recent blog posts to continue learning about some of the concepts we share during our all-too-brief EarthView programs.

This visit coincides with a very important anniversary in the history of education. On March 25, 1845, the Massachusetts legislature voted to ensure that all children in the Commonwealth would have access to public schools, regardless of race. The story of the determined parents of Nantucket is told on this date's Mass Moments.

Mashpee Middle School -- March 18

2011-03-16T12:09:00.000-04:00

41° 36' 57" N70° 30' 34" W

Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView Team is pleased to be visiting Mashpee Middle School in the Cape Cod town of Mashpee. Members of the BSU geography department have been learning about the geography of Mashpee from a Wampanoag perspective during recent field trips.

Find this and other indigenous maps at
ECHO Space

Mashpee is also known for its status as a Green Community with innovative energy production from wind and the architectural integrity of its Mashpee Commons shopping area, which was developed specifically to combat the problem of suburban sprawl.

As geographers, we are delighted to see that the town web site makes it very easy to explore Mashpee through GIS. The map of the school property below was prepared in a matter of seconds. It highlights the school property in the context of surrounding land use, and indicates the presence of wetlands. Use Mashpee's Public Maps Online site to create maps of your neighborhood or the entire town!

Our visit coincides with the anniversary of Johnny Appleseed's death in 1845. He was a real person, and he was from Massachusetts. Read about the legend and the fascinating realities of the real John Chapman on Mass Moments. Many other interesting events took place on this date, including Britain's repeal of the Stamp Act (1766) and the Gardner art theft in Boston (1990 -- still the greatest art theft ever).

Mullein Hill Christian Academy -- March 15

2011-03-15T00:10:00.001-04:00

41° 48' 39" N70° 58' 32" W

Learn more about Lat/Long

EarthView returns to Mullein Hill Christian Academy, a small school in Lakeville. As with a previous visit, BSU students in my (Dr. Hayes-Bohanan's) course for future geography teachers will participate in the program.

I have enjoyed a number of geographic connections in Lakeville since coming to this area in 1997. One of the first online education projects I did (with the help of some geography students) was a simple web site about the bald eagles that nest at Assowompsett Pond, just 2-3 miles northeast of the Academy. In order to protect water resources in Lakeville for the benefit of New Bedford and Taunton, habitat has been made available to the eagles.

View Larger Map

Because of my interest in the geography of coffee -- including the ways that local coffee shops can be part of a community -- I have been very interested in Somethin's Brewin' Book Cafe, also in Lakeville. The cafe uses the town's former library, which is a beautiful example of an historic Carnegie Library -- one of 2,509 built throughout the world.

The relationship between humans and the environment is an important aspect of geography, and Stephanie's Perennials in Lakeville is a local business that helps people in the area improve that relationship by taking better care of gardens and landscaping.

Geography education is important at Mullein Hill, and I remember being impressed with how much students understood during our previous EarthView program there. The school web site sets a good example, by including an embedded map on the contact page of its web site.

This visit to Mullein Hill Christian Academy coincides with a geographic anniversary that is important for our region. From the 1647 until March 15, 1820, Maine was administered as a territory of Massachusetts. In fact, following the Revolutionary War, much of that territory was settled by Bay Staters whose land purchases helped to pay down the Commonwealth's war debts. On this date in 1820, however, Maine became an independent state, as part of the Missouri Compromise.

East Taunton Elementary, March 14

2011-03-14T14:08:00.001-04:00

41° 52' 22" N71° 02' 41" W

Learn more about Lat/Long
Ms. Hill is a student teacher working with Mrs. Majkut's third-grade class at East Taunton Elementary. She was also a student of Dr. Domingo and Dr. Hayes-Bohanan of the EarthView team several years back, when they first became aware of EarthView. It was a delight, therefore, to bring EarthView to the class in which Ms. Hill is teaching this year. The students were very eager to learn about the earth, and showed through their questions and answers that they had already learned a great deal. It was a pleasure to make even a brief visit to ETE today, and we look forward to returning some time for a full-day program.

Dr. Hayes-Bohanan (sometimes known simply as HB) prepares East Taunton
Elementary students to enter EarthView, one of only two hand-painted
inflatable globes of its size in the world.

Ms. Hill steps into the International Date Line near Fiji as she helps
to deflate EarthView following the lesson.

Japan Science and Relief

2011-03-14T13:59:00.000-04:00

In our EarthView programs we always mention plate tectonics, because our perspective from inside the planet helps us to understand the relationships among the constantly shifting positions of plates relative to each other, and the growth of oceanic plates. We often point out the Pacific Ring of Fire -- the series of convergent and transform boundaries that surround the Pacific Ocean and that are responsible for many of the world's earthquakes, and of the subduction zones that are associated with convergent boundaries and are associated both with earthquakes and with the formation of some volcanoes. (Volcanoes can also be formed from hot spots.)

The Pacific map below shows the locations of major fault systems, plates, and volcanic activity surrounding the ocean. The image is part of an article on subduction zones found on the Geology and Landforms of Japan web site.

When talking about subduction zones and the formation of volcanoes, geographers often wave their hands to illustrate the relative positions of dense oceanic plates, less-dense continental plates, and volcanic activity. The illustration below -- from the same article on subduction -- provides a much clearer image. See the article for more detail.

Compared to other countries that have endured earthquakes and/or tsunamis in recent years -- such as Indonesia and Haiti -- Japan is much wealthier and has been considered much better prepared to cope with both kinds of disasters. Located at the convergence of three major plates -- Pacific, Eurasian, and Philippine -- Japan has been forced to consider tectonic activity in all of its building and planning.

Tragically, the March 11 earthquake was the strongest ever recorded in Japan, so the damage has overwhelmed many of its systems. The Boston Globe has posted very powerful images of the destructive power of this combined disaster in two photo essays - Massive Earthquake Hits Japan and Earthquake Aftermath. The Globe also posted a series of informative, interactive graphics under the title Disaster in Northeast Japan. This page includes three tabs: a map of Japan's nuclear power plants relative to the disaster, an animation that illustrates the spread of the tsunami wave through the Pacific (a static version is shown below), and an animation that illustrates how tsunami waves travel, and why they might not even be detected by the boats they pass under!.

Bridgewater State University has long-standing relationships in Japan, with exchanges dating back more than a century! Many short-term and long-term BSU students are Japanese citizens, and many BSU students travel to Japan for study tours or semester-long exchanges. For this reason, our campus has been very concerned about the tragedy facing the country, and BSU's Asian Studies Program has taken a lead in sharing information about news from the disaster and ways people can help.

Easy as Pi

2011-03-11T20:15:00.001-05:00

During a wonderful visit to the Galvin Middle School in Wakefield, we noticed signs indicating that the entire school would be celebrating pi day next week on March 14 -- that is, 3.14. Apparently the entire school will be wearing PI-rate shirts that day as well. Seeing a few of them today reminded me of a real pirate story from 2009, involving one of my friends and his coffee. I posted it on one of my other blogs with the title Aarrrrr-abica!

More importantly, we realized that we had brought a round object to a school that was about to celebrate pi, so I posed a few questions about it and promised to post some more.

EarthView has a flat bottom (so that it does not roll around like a hamster ball). That bottom is a circle 12 feet in diameter, containing the continent of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. If not for the flat bottom, EarthView would be a sphere 22 feet in diameter. For the questions below, it is probably best to imagine it as a perfect sphere. With these two dimensions -- and some formulas that might be in the back of your math book or at 1728.com -- you can calculate answers to the following. Be sure to keep track of your measurement units!

What is the circumference of the flat, bottom part of EarthView?
What is the area of the flat, bottom part of EarthView?
If 24 people are in EarthView, how much space does each person have to stand?
What is the surface area of EarthView (assuming it is a sphere) in square feet? What is the surface area in square yards?
What is the volume of air in EarthView?
If it takes six minutes to fill EarthView with our trusty fan, what is the rate of air flow in cubic feet per minute?
If we filled EarthView with water, how much would it weigh? (For this you need to look up or calculate the density of water in pounds per cubic foot.)

I mentioned to some classes that the Christian Science Church in Boston has a stained-glass globe 30 feet in diameter, called the Mapparium. Located in the Back Bay area near the Prudential Center, it represents the political boundaries of the entire world in 1935. Admission is $6 for adults, $4 for students, and free for MTA members. It is a great family outing that offers a great comparison with EarthView!

Given the Mapparium's 30-foot diameter, use pi to answer the following questions:

What is the surface area of the Mapparium?
What is the volume of the Mapparium?
How much bigger is the surface area of the Mapparium, compared to EarthView?
How much greater is the volume of Mapparium than that of EarthView?

The real earth is approximately 8,000 miles in diameter. (In reality, it is not quite spherical, and it is not exactly 8,000 miles in any case, but this rounded number is suitable for the calculations below.) What is its diameter in kilometers? Given this information, use pi to answer the following:

What is the surface area of the earth in square miles? In square kilometers?
What is the volume of the earth in cubic miles? In cubic kilometers?

Finally, consider your classroom globe. Use a string to calculate its circumference of the globe, and then use pi to find its diameter in inches. Use pi to find:

The surface area of the globe in square inches and in square feet.
The volume of the globe in cubic inches and cubic feet.

What patterns can you discern among all of the numbers you have calculated? How do changes in diameter, area, and volume relate to each other as spheres of different sizes are compared?

Cacao Projection

2011-03-11T04:47:00.000-05:00

EarthView team member Dr. Domingo is currently teaching and studying in Melaka (Malacca), a city and state in the country of Malaysia. He has found that the strong Portuguese influence there is reflected in Branyo music and a dance known as Jingli Nona.

Through the wonders of the Internet, he sends his greetings to the rest of the EarthView team and to the students we are meeting today in Wakefield. He is delighted to be learning about the role of Malaysia in the production of cacao, which is the major ingredient in chocolate. He found a very interesting map that shows Malaysia among the other major producers. The map is in the shape of a cacao fruit. (Cocoa is made by processing the large seeds of this fruit.)

Upcoming EarthView Visits

2011-03-10T03:52:00.007-05:00

The following is a partial list of EarthView programs taking place in coming months. As some pending engagements are confirmed, we will be adding them to the list. All town and city names are in Massachusetts, unless otherwise indicated.

For both pedagogic and security reasons, participation at school programs is limited to the students themselves, unless prior arrangements are made for visitors. Certain EarthView events are open to the public, as indicated below.

Friday, March 11
Galvin Middle School, Wakefield
Monday, March 14
East Taunton Elementary, Taunton
Tuesday, March 15
Mullein Hill Christian Academy, Lakeville
Friday, March 18
Mashpee Middle School, Mashpee
Friday, March 25
Carver Middle High School, Carver
Monday, April 4 PUBLIC EVENT
Massachusetts State House, Boston
Nurses Hall
Friday, April 8
McCall Middle School, Winchester (tentative)
Saturday, April 9
SciGirls Expo, Massachusetts Maritime Academy
Friday, April 22 PUBLIC EVENT
Bridgewater State University
EarthView at Earth Day (tentative)
Friday, April 29
KGalvin Middle School, Canton
Friday, May 6
St. Joseph Elementary, Needham
Friday, May 20
Thomas Carroll School, Peabody
Thursday, May 26
Quabbin Regional Middle School (overnight)
Friday, June 3
Abigail Adams Middle, Weymouth
Wednesday, September 7 PUBLIC EVENT
Worcester State University
Theme Semester Kick-Off: Worcester in the World
Thursday & Friday, October 6 & 7
North Reading Middle School

Galvin Middle School - Wakefield MA -- March 11

2011-03-09T11:48:00.002-05:00

42° 30' 02" N71° 04' 10" W

Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView Team is pleased to be going to the Gen. John R. Galvin Middle School in Wakefield -- not to be confused with the William H. Galvin Middle School in Canton, where we have worked with one of our BSU geography alumni in the past. Wakefield's General Galvin is a retired five-star general who was born in Wakefield and went on to command U.S. forces in NATO, among other duties. General Galvin speaks Spanish and some German, illustrating the value of learning languages!

According to the Wakefield Historical Commission, English settlement in Wakefield began in 1638, as settlers from Lynn, growing to a settlement of seven families by 1644, when it was incorporated under the name of Redding. Those settlers took "advantage of the enormous flocks of wild pigeons, wild turkeys exceeding fat, sweet and in abundance, fish in the rivers and ponds, grapes, blackberries, [and] blueberries in great quantities." As the population of the original town grew, it eventually divided into several other now-familiar towns, much as many other Massachusetts towns -- including Bridgewater -- did over the same period. The town of Wakefield was eventually to become known for a particular kind of furniture, its local industries helping to popularize rattan in the United States.

Six graders at Galvin will be using EarthView to learn about the world as a whole, especially Latin America -- which they have been studying recently -- and Europe (which is coming up next).

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has grown several times since its inception in 1949, and currently includes 34 countries: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of these, Albania and Croatia are the newest members, having been admitted in 2009.

Many non-member European countries cooperate with NATO through the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, and several non-European countries are in similar cooperative structures. An interesting geographic activity would be to construct a world map identifying NATO members and members of each of the other cooperative structures. What commonalities do members of each group appear to share? What interest might they have in common with -- or distinct from -- those of the NATO membership itself?

Gordon Mitchell School, East Bridgewater -- March 4

2011-03-04T07:17:00.000-05:00

42° 01' 50" N

70° 56' 43" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView team is returning to the Gordon W. Mitchell School in neighboring East Bridgewater for a special program with fourth graders. For an interesting historical note about the area, see the blog post for our October 2010 visit.

Our visit is on the date of Dr. Hayes-Bohanan's favorite corny riddle:

Why is this a soldier's least favorite day?

Because it is "March forth!"

Feb 11: H.H. Richardson School, North Easton

2011-02-10T21:31:00.001-05:00

42° 03' 24" N
71° 06' 26" W
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)

The EarthView team is pleased to be returning to Richardson School, named for a 19th-Century architect. It will be Dr. Domingo's first EarthView program as a grandpa, and the Richardson fourth graders will have an opportunity to see photos of a brand-new geographer!

April 9: Sci-Tech at Mass Maritime

2011-02-10T07:37:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, April 9, EarthView will be part of the Sci-Tech Girls program at Mass Maritime Academy. This is a day-long program for high school girls, with presentations on a variety of areas of study and careers in science and technology. See the program announcement for registration information.

Ellis Island

2010-12-31T10:48:00.001-05:00

The United States is a nation of immigrants, a fact that is often repeated but just as often forgotten. Twelve million people migrated to the United States through a single point between 1892 and 1954. Now at least 100,000,000 Americans are thought to be descended from those who entered through Ellis Island.

Ellis Island: Through America's Gateway is an introduction created at Mt. Carmel High School in California. The History Channel's Ellis Island page is more comprehensive, with videos and links to recommended articles. The Ellis Island Foundation hosts a searchable database; details require a paid subscription, but finding names and dates of entry is free. I learned that 3 passengers shared my paternal grandfather's last name (though I know his branch of the family arrived before Ellis Island opened) and 49 shared my maternal grandfather's name (one of those might be an ancestor). The job is made much easier by the fact that my name is not "Smith," of which there were over 69,000 registered!

Last and certainly not least, Scholastic's site Immigration: Stories of Yesterday and Today is full of stories about immigration from Ellis Island as well as more recent times, up to the present generation of migrants. The site includes activities, such as graphing, mapping, and oral histories.

North Andover Middle School -- Dec 16 & 17

2010-12-15T21:35:00.002-05:00

42° 41' 36" N
71° 07' 15" W
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)

The EarthView team is enjoying its third visit to North Andover Middle School, a regional leader in geographic education. Mr. Poirier has once again arranged a Family Geography Night, of which EarthView is a part.

Students and EarthView coordinators Drs. Domingo and Hayes-Bohanan enjoyed a variety of discussions "all around the world" from recent news stories to the geography of coffee. Some classes also spent time sketching the globe from the outside, labeling whatever details they could identify on their own.

The results were impressive:

Mr. Poirier recently arranged for Mike Cambra of Mission to Liberia

to speak to about 200 students in the auditorium. As the students learned, this is a Massachusetts-based organization that is doing a lot of great work to support relief and development projects in the country of Liberia, a western African country with interesting historical connections to the United States. The main project of Mission to Liberia this year is raising money to provide clean water in communities in Liberia. The Massachusetts Geographic Alliance recently presented its annual Glenn Miller Award to the organization, and is working with Bridgewater State University to support its important work.

Get more Africa Maps from the
Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection

Survivor Islands

2010-12-13T23:53:00.001-05:00

In addition to the EarthView blog, I also write for Wiley GeoDiscoveries, a blog hosted a major publisher of geography text books. For the past couple of weeks, we have been using EarthView to show the location of Tokelau and to discuss the recent rescue of three teenagers from that Pacific island nation that were lost at sea, and I published maps and other information on the EarthView blog.

Then I noticed that the story of the rescue occurred just before another interesting story about survival on Pacific Islands. This was the effort of people from small islands throughout the world to get people at the U.N. Climate Conference to consider what will happen to them and their countries as sea level rises. My article on GeoDiscoveries is called Survivor Islands.

~~ Dr. Hayes-Bohanan

Source: AOSIS

Atlantic: Biography of an Ocean

2010-12-10T12:58:00.001-05:00

During our visit to Berkley Middle School, Dr. Domingo mentioned Simon Winchester's book, Atlantic: A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories. In it, Mr. Winchester -- who lives in western Massachusetts -- describes his year of travel around the entire Atlantic Basin, encompassing the coasts of Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

He shared many photos and stories of his journey on The World from Public Radio International. He was also interviewed on the National Public Radio program Morning Edition, which posted his interview and excerpts of the book.

Berkley Middle School

2010-12-10T01:35:00.003-05:00

41° 50' 56" N
71° 05' 03" W
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)

The EarthView Team is delighted to be returning to the Berkley Middle School, which we visited just before Halloween last year. A major attraction in Berkley is the Dighton Rock State Park, occupying 85 acres along the Taunton River, in a stretch of the river where fresh and salt water meet and mix. The park is named for a large rock that was deposited there by a glacier. Known as a glacial erratic, the rock was deposited as ice melted away in this area, between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago -- the blink of a geologic eye!

Public domain photo from Wikimedia

The rock itself -- covered in petroglyphs (rock carvings) of unknown origins, has been moved to the inside a museum. Dr. Domingo and Dr. Hayes-Bohanan share a fascination with glacial erratics. See photos of erratics we encountered in Wareham and Eastham during a recent BSU Geography Department field camp on Cape Cod. We have discovered that about a decade ago, a group of folk musicians in Alaska were known as the Glacial Erratics, following the ice seasonally from their home to other parts of the country.

The Dighton Rock State Park is located in Berkley, across from the Taunton River estuary from the town of Dighton. We look forward to finding out from Berkley students what other features of the town should not be missed!

View Larger Map

A Vast Ocean, Avast!

2010-12-03T01:56:00.001-05:00

On October 5, three boys, aged 14 and 15, set out to visit a girl they had just met at a rugby game. They were on the island of Atafu, the northernmost of three atolls in Tokelau. She had returned to her home on the southernmost island, 100 miles away. They set off in a 12-foot-boat (which could fit inside EarthView) with a few coconuts, and did not realize they were lost at sea until two weeks later. By then, a search team from New Zealand had tried -- and failed -- to find them.

A week after that, they caught a sea bird, which would be their only food source until being rescued on November 24, about 600 miles from home. They wHere taken to a hospital in Fiji, where they were found to be in remarkably good health.

They survived long after funerals had been held for them, and were at sea longer than has been documented for any other unsupported humans.

The unusual spatial pattern of the islands of the Pacific is one that many EarthView visitors find amazing. Fiji is close to the International Dateline, just off the top of EarthView's zipper. Hundreds of other islands are found throughout the Pacific -- far more than in the other oceans -- often tiny dots that are separated by huge distances, and arranged in interesting ways. Tokelau is a series of three rings, each a few miles across, with people able to inhabit only the outer edges of each. The rings are spaced evenly over 100 miles, but with a total land area of only 5 square miles! At 1,500 people, the population of the country is less than half the size of the student body at the public high school in Brockton, Massachusetts!

CIA map from thePerry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
at the University of Texas

The vast distances between small population centers leads to interesting results; when they were brought to Fiji, the boys were visited by relatives living there. This was not at all surprising, even though they were in a small place 600 miles from home! Today's news (which was available yesterday because of that dateline phenomenon) reported that the boys had returned home, meaning that they had flown to American Samoa, and would only have to wait two more weeks for a boat to carry them to Tokelau.

Learn more about the fascinating geography of this region from Maps of the South Pacific, a travel web site that provides an interactive map of the region as a whole and individual maps of each country. The site also explains the distinctions among Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. (It does not cover Macronesia, which is nearly antipodean, in the North Atlantic.

Earlier this year, the EarthView team followed the progress of Katie Spotz, whose Row for Water project took her across the Atlantic Ocean. She was at sea for 70 days, in a well-stocked boat and plenty of communication equipment. From her voyage we learned some of the risks involved in small-craft travel on the high seas.

Both for Katie's planned voyage and for the boys' unplanned voyage, fresh water was, ironically, a key consideration. Katie had a water filtration kit. The boys used a tarp to gather rain and mist at night. In their case, this was starting to be inadequate and they had begun to drink seawater, a dehydrating practice that would likely have proven fatal had they been at sea a few more days.

See BBC video about the story.

Kennedy Middle School, Woburn -- Dec 3

2010-12-02T16:28:00.004-05:00

N 42 ° 29' 34" W 71 ° 08' 46"

Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)

EarthView is making its first appearance in Woburn, at the Kennedy Middle School.

Our visit on December 3 coincides with the anniversaries of several geographically-significant events.

1984: A toxic cloud at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India killed thousands of residents in their sleep, drawing attention to industrial safety in developing countries

1979: Iran accepted its constitution, weeks after U.S. hostages were taken

1975: Lao People's Democratic Republic proclaimed, as the government falls to communist forces

1967: First human heart transplant: Dr. Christian Barnard in South Africa

1833: First coeducational college opens: Oberlin, Ohio

1621: Galileo invents telescope

Because of the Kennedy School's proximity to the now famous site of Wells G&H, we will be speaking with the older students about the role of medical geography in addressing toxic waste contamination and its affects on public health.

Trinity Catholic Academy, Brockton -- Nov 12

2010-11-11T21:35:00.000-05:00

N 42 ° 04' 51.2"
W 71 ° 00' 23.0"
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Here is a challenge: This school is close to the only land-based degree confluence in Massachusetts. How far is it from that point in degrees, minutes and seconds? How far is it in miles or kilometers?

The EarthView team is looking forward to its return to Trinity Catholic Academy, which we last visited in May, 2009. We have literally seen thousands of students since then, but we look forward to returning to Trinity, where our own Ms. Joyce is one of the teachers. We know her students will be ready with great geography questions for the team.

Largest Countries

2010-11-06T15:27:00.000-04:00

Although the EarthView globe does not show political boundaries, we often discuss the locations of countries, especially those with the largest populations. As of 2010, the ten most populous countries are those listed above. The U.S. Census Bureau's country rankings page allows users to find the rank of any country in any year from 1950 to 2050 (future rankings are estimates, of course).

To make direct comparisons possible, the database shows the ranking of Russia for all years, even though prior to 1991 it was not listed separately and was part of the Soviet Union's number-three ranking. Its first post-Soviet ranking was number six, but it has now fallen to number nine. Use the database to estimate when Russia will drop from the top-ten ranking in population.

Its position as the largest country by land area will not change, of course, as 11.5 percent of the earth's land is in Russia, no matter how many people live there.

COUNTRY OR AREA	POPULATION 2010
China	1,330,141,295
India	1,173,108,018
United States	310,232,863
Indonesia	242,968,342
Brazil	201,103,330
Pakistan	184,404,791
Bangladesh	156,118,464
Nigeria	152,217,341
Russia	139,390,205
Japan	126,804,433

This map was created by the US CIA but is
hosted on the web site of the Embassy of Russia to the UK

Armenian Sisters' Academy, Lexington -- November 15

2010-11-06T12:01:00.001-04:00

42° 26' 16" N
71° 13' 06" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

Members of the EarthView team and other Bridgewater State University Geographers are looking forward to a visit to the Armenian Sisters' Academy in Lexington on November 15. Our visit is on the anniversary of several interesting geographic events, which are listed at the end of this post.

The school was founded by Sister Alphonsa Bedrosian, beginning as a much smaller institution in Watertown and expanded on its current campus in 1982. The school serves both Armenian and non-Armenian children through middle school, with an emphasis on Armenian history and culture. The Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception operate the academy in Lexington as well as two others in the United States -- in Philadelphia and Los Angeles -- as well as others throughout the world.

View Larger Map

Armenia is a small country located in the center of the Caucasus region of southeastern Europe. Many Armenian Americans live in the greater Boston area. See the Armenia maps at the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection for more maps Armenia and the surrounding region, reflecting boundaries recognized by the United States. Also see the fascinating and complete collection of maps at Armenica.org. We are using maps from both collections in a special slide show for students at the Academy.

The EarthView visit takes place on the anniversary of several significant geographic milestones.

November 15, 1990
President Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, making the 1970 law stronger

November 15, 1806
Explorer Zebulon Pike sighted Pikes Peak, in Colorado, which was later named in his honor.

Image: Pikes Peak Radio & Electronics Museum

November 15, 1763
Almost a century before the U.S. Civil War, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began surveying Mason-Dixon Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

North Reading Middle School

2010-11-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

42° 34' 36" N
71° 05' 17" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

North Reading is the home of Jon Favreau, who graduated from North Reading High School less than a decade ago and is already the chief speech-writer for President Barack Obama.

The EarthView team is visiting North Reading Middle School on November 5, on the 75th anniversary of the board game Monopoly. What is geographic about this game? (Hint: In 1972, fans of the game actually prevented a U.S. city from changing the names of two of its streets!)

November 5 is also the date on which -- in 1492 -- Christopher Columbus first learned about corn, the cultivation of which had by then already spread from central Mexico to the island of Cuba. What is the importance of corn today?

Coincidence in the Ring of Fire?

2010-10-29T17:41:00.001-04:00

EarthView students know that the island nation of Indonesia -- the world's fourth-most populous country -- is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The eruption and the earthquake that triggered the tsunami this week occurred 800 miles apart, affecting two separate islands -- Java and Sumatra. They may be related, as have similarly distant events in the past, such as an Alaska earthquake and geyser activity in Yellowstone, Wyoming. Indonesia is the most tectonically active place on Earth, however, so it will be some time before a connection can be proven or discounted.

Learn more about this week's tragedies and the possible connections from National Geographic magazine.

National Geographic photo of damage from 2004 tsunami

Gordon Mitchell School, East Bridgewater -- October 22

2010-10-22T09:49:00.002-04:00

42° 01' 50" N
70° 56' 43" W
Learn more about Lat/Long

The EarthView team is delighted to be returning to the Gordon W. Mitchell School in neighboring East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, which the team last visited in 2009. In fact, two Mitchell students are close family friends of team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan.

The school is located very close to a site known as Sachem Rock, where the original conveyance of land from the Wampanoag Indians to Miles Standish in 1651. This land became the town of Bridgewater in 1656, and that town was eventually divided into what we now know as seven different cities and towns. In some ways, this was the beginning of the westward expansion of what would become the United States.

During the visit, the team was accompanied by Kiado Cruz, a farmer and activist from Chiapas, Mexico, and his team from Witness for Peace. They gave a presentation on the importance of local agriculture at Bridgewater State University on October 21 as part of a New England tour of schools, churches, and civic organizations. Although Kiado, Nikky, and Susan did not have a chance to visit with Mitchell students, they did have an opportunity to see the world from the inside, and to contemplate their own important work in a global context.

Drying Lakes

2010-10-18T07:45:00.000-04:00

Lake Chad images (1972 and 1987)
as posted Waterless on the Town Square blog

EarthView is a terrific learning tool, whether viewed from inside or out. During today's program at the Ahern Middle School, a student looking at north-central Africa from outside asked about the body of water surrounded by dry land. What she was noticing was Lake Chad, which was once the sixth-largest lake in the world but had already lost a considerable amount of its surface area by the time EarthView was painted in the 1990s. In that sense it is much like the Aral Sea, which long ago surrendered its status as the world's fourth-largest lake, and which the EarthView artist represented with a similar, broad fringe of dry land.

Both lakes are found in arid or semi-arid lands, and are shared by multiple countries -- Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon in the first case and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the latter. Moreover, in the case of the Aral Sea, lands in four additional countries contributed directly to the drainage area of the sea.

Image from the Fire Earth blog

Growing or shrinking lakes represent shifts in the water balance for the watersheds (also known as drainage basins) in which they are found. Lakes can shrink as a result of water use that exceeds rainfall in the basin as a whole. This in turn can affect habitat in and near the lake, the availability of irrigation or drinking water, and even the regional climate.

Both of these shrinking lakes are excellent examples of the use of satellite images to monitor lakes. The United State Geological Survey (USGS) includes both Lake Chad and the Aral Sea in its EarthShot series, which documents many other examples of the uses of remote sensing. The Visualizing Earth project at UC-San Diego has a similar Aral Sea page that -- like the EarthShots pages -- allows users to move between satellite and ground-level images.

For decades to come, Lake Chad and the Aral Sea will remain reminders of how seriously humans can damage the natural environments on which we depend. Despite the bad news, some positive steps are being taken: international bodies are working together to protect the wetlands of Lake Chad and a new dam is helping to increase the flow of water to the Aral Sea. People in many countries have much more to do, however, if these lakes are to be fully restored!

Ahern Middle School - Foxborough - October 15

2010-10-14T21:56:00.002-04:00

42° 4' 27" N
71° 14' 18" W
Learn more about Lat/Long
The John J. Ahern Middle School in Foxborough is hosting the EarthView team for the third time in the program's three years. A lot has happened with EarthView and with the Geography Department that runs the program since the first visit in 2008.
For example, the department is no longer part of Bridgewater State College -- it is now part of Bridgewater State UNIVERSITY, a teaching university that will continue to serve the region. Second, the department -- formerly in the School of Arts & Sciences -- is now part of the university's new School of Science & Mathematics. Geography is both a social and a physical science, connected to the other so-called STEM disciplines.
The EarthView team is particularly interested to learn that Ahern will soon have a family math night. We will be sharing ideas with Ahern teachers about ways to include geographic fun in that event!
To learn more about what EarthView has achieved over the past three years and what still lies ahead, the team invites you to scroll through the blog -- which now has close to 100 articles about school visits, geographic education, and some fascinating stories of our planet!

Circle of Illumination

2010-10-05T08:15:00.000-04:00

WORLD SUNLIGHT MAP

In the hallway outside the Geography Department office at Bridgewater State University is a fascinating device known as Geochron. Manufactured decades ago, it is a combination map and clock that is configured so that it always represents the areas of the earth in sunlight and darkness. At all times, exactly one half of the earth is illuminated by the sun, though cloud cover can affect how much reaches the surface and latitude can influence its intensity. The 50 percent in sunlight is known as the circle of illumination, because the boundary between sunlight and darkness forms a circle.

On the equinoxes, the circle of illumination intersects both the north and south poles, but during the rest of the year, the circle appears tilted first one way and then another, as the earth orbits the sun at a constant 23.5-degree angle. During this orbit, the apparent position of the sun changes steadily, and it appears directly overhead at only one place at a time on the planet. That location is known as the sub-solar point, and it oscillates from the Tropic of Cancer on the summer solstice to the Tropic of Capricorn on the winter solstice (as defined in the northern hemisphere -- people in the south use the opposite terminology).

On the original, mechanical Geochron, a small dot represents the single place on earth -- always in the tropics -- where the sun appears to be directly overhead. Of course, there is only one such point at any time, known as the sub-solar point because it appears to be under the sun.It moves from the Tropic of Cancer on our summer solstice to the Tropic of Cancer on our winter solstice, crossing the equator on the equinoxes.

Two digital versions of the GeoChron are readily available online. The World Sunlight Map shown above also represents current cloud cover and is available in several different projections. The NIST version from the National Institute of Standards is accompanied by the current, official time as used for U.S. Government purposes. (Be sure to adjust the time zone or display options if necessary.)

With parental permission, it is also now possible to install a miniature version of the GeoChron as a desktop gadget on your computer, allowing you to track the sun at all times.

We invite EarthView participants to view the mechanical GeoChron in our geography department, in order to see the circle of illumination in more detail and to marvel at the clever, compact design. On the mechanical version, it is also possible to see how the sun's noon position advances and retreats through the year not only by latitude but also by longitude, tracing the figure-eight shape of the analemma.

World Daylight Clock on Your Desktop

2010-10-05T06:42:00.000-04:00

The circle of illumination always lights half of the earth's surface, with the other half left in darkness and a thin band of twilight in between. You can check the digital version of GeoChron on the EarthView blog throughout the year to learn how the illuminated area changes through the seasons. You can also -- with parental permission -- install the World Daylight Clock (a Google Gadget) on your desktop to watch the progress of the sun minute-by-minute.

I captured the image above just a couple minutes ago, while writing this article. It shows that my home in Bridgewater is about to rotate into the circle of illumination, and indeed it is twighlight outside my window.

Spofford Pond School, Boxford -- September 24

2010-09-23T00:18:00.004-04:00

Spofford Pond School

42°41'46"N

71°01'02"W
(Learn more about Lat/Long for ideas that combine math and geography learning. For example, this is the farthest north we have taken EarthView; an article in the archives for November 2009 indicates the one time we came closest to this latitude -- what college was the site of that visit?)

Most EarthView programs are in Southeastern Massachusetts, relatively close to EarthView's home base at Bridgewater State University.

As geographers, we love to travel to new places, and most of the team has spent little if any time in Boxford prior to this visit. Also, our goal is to improve geographic education throughout Massachusetts, so we are delighted to have our first North Shore school visit.

In exploring the geography of Boxford, we learned that it is facing an environmental problem that some might find surprising: the margin between forest and growing suburbs includes ideal conditions for beavers. Adorable as beavers may be, they create an unusual set of problems for suburban homeowners. The town web site includes a report on beaver encroachment and what to do about it.

The EarthView team learned some interesting news about geographic research from Spofford Pond teacher Ms. Sorensen. As reported by Discovery, computer models have provided a plausible explanation for the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea.

East Middle School in Braintree - Sept 17

2010-09-17T06:52:00.000-04:00

42°13'15"N

70°59'23"W
(How far is this from South Middle School? Learn more about Lat/Long)

The EarthView team is delighted to continue the new school year with a return to Braintree. We encountered a lot of great geography students last week at South Middle School. We have provided the latitude and longitude of each school (as we do for all EarthView programs).

Here is a challenge: How far apart are the schools? They would be in the same little red dot of our laser pointer on EarthView, but there is some distance between them. It be measured in feet, miles, meters, inches, or kilometers along the road or along a straight line. It can also be measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds on the globe!

South Middle School in Braintree -- September 10

2010-09-09T23:06:00.001-04:00

42°11'02"N

70°59'53"W
(Learn more about Lat/Long)

After quite an exciting summer of special appearances (see recent blog posts below) the EarthView Team is delighted to be reunited for the start of our third school year. Close to 20,000 students and community members have seen EarthView in the past two years, and we look forward to bringing our program to thousands more this year -- each in small groups that have the special experience of seeing the earth from the inside out!

We started the year with two programs in Braintree, the first of which was at South Middle School, where Mrs. Drayer teaches geography through the Olympics! We also learned that Mrs. Drayer and EarthView team member are both proud UMBC Retrievers!

Bridgewater State University

2010-09-09T21:49:00.003-04:00

41°59'15"N

70°58'12"W

(Kelly Gymnasium)

After 170 years as a Normal School, Teachers' College, State College -- with a few other titles over the years as well -- the home of EarthView is now the Geography Department at Bridgewater State University, the largest institution in the new Massachusetts State University system.

Opening Day this year included a visit from Gov. Deval Patrick, a fly-over courtesy of the BSU aviation program, and of course an EarthView exhibition! We were honored that our visiting librarian-scholar from Cambodia took the time to visit EarthView; having seen the Mapparium in Boston earlier in her visit, she will return to Cambodia with two very memorable geography experiences!

BSU Library Assistant Joan Luiz, Pannasastra University Librarian Vanna Sok, and EarthView Team member James Hayes-Bohanan pose directly "south" of Cambodia on BSU Opening Day.

BSU relies on energetic, cheerful, and well-informed Orientation Leaders to welcome each class to campus. This year, the OLs were enthusiastic participants in their own special orientation to the planet! One of the OLs is actually a BSU geography major. (She is shown above, in the red shirt.)

Latitude/Longitude Converters

2010-07-20T08:48:00.005-04:00

Geographers and other scientists use latitude and longitude to identify places on earth reliably and precisely. Every location on earth has a unique combination of latitude (north or south of the equator) and longitude (east or west of the Prime Meridian). Geographer Matt Rosenberg explains these concepts in more detail in his article Latitude and Longitude: Discover the Secrets of Parallels and Meridians.

Latitude and longitude are each expressed as degrees or fractions of degrees. At the equator, a whole degree can be used to locate a place to within a mile or so -- a suitable level of precision for locating a city, for example. A degree comprises 60 minutes, so that a latitude or longitude expressed in degrees and minutes is precise to roughly 100 feet, which is suitable for a lot of purposes, such as finding a house. Fractions of an arc minute are known as seconds, and again there are 60 to each minute. At the equator, coordinates expressed as degrees, minutes and seconds would be precise within a couple of feet. Fractions of a second might be used for even more precise work, such as the location of property boundaries, the corners of a building, or the location of a well. (The caveat "at the equator" is used above because the surface length of a degree of latitude changes slightly from the equator to the poles because of the oblateness of the earth's shape, and the length of a degree of longitude changes dramatically, down to zero at the poles, because of the convergence of the lines there.)

Followers of this blog may already be familiar with the latitude/longitude lookup utility created by Steve Morse, which allows users to look up addresses and find latitudes and longitudes. What is especially useful about this site is that it does not draw on just one source. It uses various mapping web sites, showing that although each site is precise to the equivalent of inches or millimeters, they are only as accurate as the datasets upon which they are based. For any given address, users may find small or large differences, depending on how large a property is, and how each database treats its proximity to nearby roads.

For various reasons, it is often useful to express latitude and longitude as decimal fractions of degrees, rather than minutes and seconds. This is particularly true if distance or area calculations are being made on the basis of the coordinates. Geographers usually prefer the conventional terms, however. Conversion from one to the other is relatively simple, but it can be tedious. For this reason, the conversion utility from the FCC is particularly helpful. It allows users to enter coordinates in either format (d-m-s or decimal) and convert easily to the other. Another interesting utility allows the distance between two points to be calculated from their respective coordinates.

Have you ever heard that if you could dig a really deep hole, you could get to China? From locations in North America, this would not be the case, even if digging such a whole were possible. Geographers can use latitude and longitude to make a simple calculation of where such a journey would end, by finding the antipode. In fact, for most locations on land, the antipode is in a body of water.

"Earth Sandwich" enthusiasts have made a fun geographic project of marking antipodes by making 8,000-mile-thick sandwiches of the earth, with a piece of toast carefully located on opposite sides of the planet at the same time. A similar hobby is the marking of degree confluence points in the geodetic grid, one of which is located very close to EarthView's home in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Photos from Summer of Science program

2010-07-12T17:49:00.002-04:00

EarthView team members Dr. Domingo and Dr. Hayes-Bohanan thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on July 9 to be part of the Summer of Science kick-off event. (Our team also included geography alumna Monique Buckley, educator and photographer extraordinaire and winner of the Rao Scholarship.) We enjoyed the company of faculty, staff, and students from all six CONNECT campuses who are bringing very impressive Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) outreach programs to the young people of southeastern Massachusetts. It was great to see so many committed colleagues and students from public higher education contributing to the development of human capital of our region from early childhood through post-graduate education.

We also had occasion to meet some of the area children who participate in the programs, and the CONNECT leaders and other officials who advocate tirelessly for public higher education in our Commonwealth. We had time to take a few photos of our own, but we know other media were present, and we hope to provide links to additional coverage in the next few days.

As EarthView fans know, we will take our giant globe anywhere there is an audience. For this occasion, we rose to a unique challenge, and safely inflated EarthView among the model engines in a mechanical teaching bay.

We were delighted to continue our discussion of K-16 geography education with our own Dr. Dana Mohler-Faria (r), President of Bridgewater State College and with Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville (2nd from left).

We were also pleased to show EarthView to Dr. Jean MacCormack, Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and Admiral Richard Gurnon, President of Mass Maritime and host of this lovely event.

Dartmouth Middle students journey to center of Earth

2010-07-03T10:48:00.000-04:00

Thanks to South Coast Today for letting the Dartmouth community know about EarthView's June 8 visit to Dartmouth Middle School.

We will be back on the South Coast on July 9 as part of the Summer of Science program at Mass Maritime. EarthView will be open to the public, along with a lot of other great exhibits, from 1 to 3 pm.

CONNECT Summer of Science -- Friday July 9

2010-07-01T13:40:00.002-04:00

41°44'20"N

70°37'27"W

RADM Maurice Bresnahan, Jr. Hall

Massachusetts Maritime Academy
Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts

EarthView will be part of the CONNECT Summer of Science program on Friday, July 9. The Event showcases Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education experiences for K-12 and the importance of science education.

On Friday July 9, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, students, families, educators, and science buffs of all ages are invited to experience the kick-off of this year’s Summer of Science. Enjoy some ice cream, enter to win tuition waivers and discounts, and see some of the cool science and technology programs first-hand -- including EarthView!

All are welcome. Please let CONNECT know if you are planning on coming by email to kathleen.kirby@connectsemass.org.

Shipwrecks of Boston Harbor

2010-06-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

The EarthView Team salutes Victoria Stevens of the Hull Lifesaving Museum for creating a wonderful online resource for geographic education. The online map of historic Boston shipwrecks complements the museum's rich collection of artifacts and exhibits related to the heroic life-saving efforts along New England shores.

The online exhibit allows students to find information about 75 of the shipwrecks that lie beneath the waters of Boston Harbor. Students can use the map to look for patterns, such as the clustering of wrecks in certain areas or where wrecks were more common in particular time periods.

The creation of the website is described in today's Boston Globe, along with some discussion of the changes that eventually made navigation of the harbor much less hazardous.

We encourage our EarthView students to visit the museum -- online and in Hull!

Happy Anniversary, Quabbin

2010-06-22T16:07:00.000-04:00

The story of the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts is rich in geographic questions. Rural towns were sacrificed to allow a city to continue growing. Ample water is piped daily from an area of surplus to an area of chronic water shortages (the amounts of rain are not that different, but the density of population certainly is). Some land was lost, while other land was protected.

On the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the filling of the Quabbin Reservoir, EarthView team member posted this remembrance on his environmental geography blog.

Beyond Earth

2010-06-18T23:41:00.000-04:00

EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan recently went with his family to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC and found it full of geography lessons! This museum is free and open to the public -- part of British scientist James Smithson's immense gift to the United States (which he had never visited).

This particular part of the Smithsonian Institution is valuable for geographers in two main ways. First, aviation and aerospace technologies have greatly increased the ability of humans to explore and observe planet Earth. People now routinely travel distances in a single day that once required months, years, or even generations to traverse. Air travel makes the human connection between places much stronger than they once were -- even for people who never get on an airplane themselves. Additionally, aerial photography and satellite imagery have greatly improved our ability to map the planet.

Just as important, however, is the lessons about our own planet that can be learned from studying and exploring others. The poster shown below is one of many that makes comparisons between Earth and other planets. The online exhibition Exploring the Planets is a good place to learn more.

State House Visit Success

2010-06-09T14:14:00.000-04:00

The EarthView team -- accompanied by several excellent geography teachers and students -- spent Monday, June 7 in the historic Nurses Hall of the Massachusetts State House. We met senators, representatives, staff members, BSC geography alumni, and tourists -- all of whom were excited to see the Earth in all its glory right in the People's House.

We even learned that at least one legislator has a geography degree, and many others expressed their support for our efforts to broaden geographic education in the Commonwealth and to restore licensure for geography teachers in the near future.

See more photos of the event on Flickr.

Massachusetts State House -- Monday, June 7

2010-06-04T02:19:00.002-04:00

From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, June 7, EarthView will be on display in Nurses Hall in the Massachusetts State House, an architectural gem from 1798. The purpose of the visit will be to give legislators the opportunity to experience the excitement about geographic education that has followed EarthView around the Commonwealth over the past two years. It is also an opportunity for the EarthView Team and other members of the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance to make the case for critical reforms in curriculum and licensure.

Image: EssentialArchitecture.com

Smoke in the Sky

2010-06-01T14:10:00.001-04:00

On Memorial Day, residents of Southeastern Massachusetts -- and much of New England -- had a stark reminder of how interconnected planet Earth really is. Forest fires several hundred miles away in Quebec were connected to our region by continental-scale wind patterns that made it look -- and smell -- as though the fires were right around the corner. This is also a good reminder of why EarthView does not show national boundaries. Although they are important for some things, they matter not one bit for others!

World Ocean Day -- June 8

2010-05-31T22:08:00.000-04:00

Waterworld: How the ocean made us who we are

As EarthView visitors know, water covers most of planet Earth. Most of that water, of course, is in the oceans, where it cannot be used directly by humans, other than to float boats. As this article about World Oceans Day (June 8) illustrates, however, humans and pre-humans have always been deeply affected by oceans.

Geography Careers

2010-05-30T07:40:00.000-04:00

Because geography teachers -- such as the EarthView team -- like teaching geography so much, it is easy to think that teaching is the only job for geographers.

Perhaps this impression is created because employment ads do not usually include the word "geographer." Instead, geographers have jobs with many different titles, such as Regulatory Analyst, Publisher, Market Researcher, Park Ranger, Project Manager, or even President.

Some famous geographers include Michael Jordan, Mother Teresa, and Kofi Anan. Less famously, EarthView Team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan used his geographic education in an environmental consulting firm, a specialty food manufacturing company, and many local volunteer organizations -- even his church. We also know geographers who work in many interesting jobs in newspapers, department-stores, libraries, and computer companies. Of course, some of us do find teaching to be the most rewarding path, but it is not the only one available to geographers.

Geographers are hired for some jobs because of specific skills, but they also tend to have some general skills that make them suitable for all kinds of employment. The computer skills needed to work with Geographic Information Systems, for example, are applicable in many kinds of workplaces. Geographers also tend to be good at both research and writing, Geographers also tend to work very well as part of a team, because geography involves bringing together many different kinds of ideas.

For more information, see the "Perfect Major" page from the Bridgewater State College Geography Department and the Geography Careers pages from the Association of American Geographers.

Quabbin Regional Middle School

2010-05-27T05:58:00.000-04:00

42° 24' 07" N
72° 06' 47" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder! Use it to find the angular distance from Quabbin Regional Middle School to your house or to any place on earth. Use it with a globe to find the school's antipode -- the place on the exact opposite side of the earth. It would also be a cool thing to add to the school's web site!

The EarthView team is excited about its return to Quabbin Regional Middle School for the second time -- to be part of its annual overnight program. The entire event is beyond EarthView's normal bed time, so we will only be with the Quabbin seventh graders for half the night! We look forward to an enthusiastic crowd of geo-learners, and to seeing our friend Ms. Erin Stevens, the teacher who coordinates the overnight fun. She is also a leader in geographic education as part of the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance.

Maps that Changed the World

2010-05-18T11:58:00.000-04:00

The EarthView team is just like the Chinese emperor Zhédì (悊帝) in one respect: like him, we have a very cool globe. His is thought to have been prepared by Jesuit missionaries in 1623. It is remarkable for its accuracy, particularly for showing that the rest of the world was not just a series of small islands!

Emperor Zhédì's globe is one of ten maps that changed the world, according to a recent article by British map librarian Peter Barber.

How Big is the Gulf Oil Spill?

2010-05-18T11:35:00.000-04:00

How big is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Google engineer Paul Rademacher has created a web page that allows users to show the size of the spill in relation to any location on earth. This is very useful for helping students to understand the scale of the problem. The map below is what the spill would look like if it were centered on Bridgewater, Massachusetts (where EarthView is based). Enter any other location on the site to make a similar comparison (a Google Earth plug-in may be required).

Eliot School in Needham -- May 14

2010-05-14T01:14:00.001-04:00

42º 18' 23" N
71º 14' 19" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder! Use it to find the angular distance from the Eliot School to your house or to any place on earth. Use it with a globe to find the school's antipode -- the place on the exact opposite side of the earth.

You can also use the latitude and longitude of the school to calculate the angular distances (that is, how many degrees of latitude north or south and how many degrees of longitude east or west) the school is from the oil well that is currently leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. On the map below, the well is shown as a red X at "Mississippi Canyon 252" and the grid shows latitudes and longitudes. (Click the map to enlarge, see the complete map here, or see all of the maps from the incident here.) This is a forecast map -- it was made yesterday, but shows where geographers and other scientists expect the oil to be today. How can they make predictions like that?

The name of the Eliot School has an interesting history. John Eliot translated the Bible into the Algonquin language, which was remarkable for several reasons. First, to do so he had to create a written version of what had been a spoken language. Second, the printing itself came more than a century ahead of any other Bible printed in North America.

EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan has actually met missionaries in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil who do similar work. The Summer Institute of Linguistics studies the languages of indigenous people in order to create written versions of their languages, so that they can then teach them to read in their own languages. They then publish Bibles and other materials in those languages. Today, the work of such scholar/missionaries is controversial. What could be some reasons in favor of and against doing such work?

Nauset Regional Middle School - May 7, 2010

2010-05-07T03:46:00.001-04:00

41° 47' 03" N
69° 59' 15" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder! Use it to find your angular distance from Nauset Regional Middle School. This is a rare visit for EarthView, which spends most of its time west of the 70th meridian.

The EarthView team is visiting Nauset Regional Middle School, near the "elbow" of Cape Cod. The Geography Department at Bridgewater State College (which is the home of EarthView) has an annual field trip to Cape Cod for its students. The trip is called HumPhy, which stands for HUMan and PHYsical geography. Cape Cod, which was deposited by receding glaciers in the recent geologic past and has a very interesting cultural mosaic, is an excellent place to explore all kinds of geography!

Return to Carver Middle School

2010-05-01T13:58:00.005-04:00

41° 53' 31" N
70° 45' 11" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder!
On April 30, 2010, EarthView returned to Carver Middle School, where it had been in March 2009. The blog post from that earlier event includes a link to a nice video about the visit.
The more recent visit occurred on Louisiana Day, the anniversary of Louisiana's admission to the Union in 1812. As we visited, there was great interest in the recent oil spill off the Louisiana coast, as well as volcanic eruptions in Iceland and Guatemala.

The Santiaguito volcano is part of a line of volcanoes along the southwestern coast of Guatemala, all of which are formed by the inch-by-inch subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Central American plate. It erupted most recently a few days before our visit, and though the impact has been far less than in the recent case of Eyjafjallajokull, it did close schools, restrict aviation, and damage crops. Santiaguito Volcano is located in a very remote region, about 10 miles west of Lake Atitlan, where EarthView team member Dr. Hayes-Bohanan spent time with his family (and coffee farmers) in 2008.

We also discussed the recent oil spill in Louisiana, which is threatening coastal resources and communities.

Iceland Volcano

2010-04-17T08:04:00.001-04:00

People throughout the world are being affected by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl) in Iceland, because ash and dust are drifting across much of Europe. This affects people traveling to or from Europe, as well as people making connection in European on their way between other parts of the world. See National Geographic News for more photos.

Meteor lands in Midwest

2010-04-17T07:28:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday evening, a half-ton meteor lit up the night sky in the United States Midwest, reminding us of our place in the solar system. See a video captured on a police camera and read about meteor science on National Geographic News.

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS

2010-04-16T08:26:00.007-04:00

EarthView is on display at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in the historic Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC.
38° 55' 30" N
77° 03' 18" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder!

EarthView team member Dr. Vernon Domingo is shown just a bit to the west of his native South Africa in the lobby of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. EarthView is at the AAG meeting as part of our effort to encourage geographic education at all levels in the United States.

Students from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica point to their homes in Jamaica and Trinidad.

AAG Executive Director Doug Richardson with EarthView.

AAG senior staff member Susan Gallagher played a key role in arranging for EarthView's arrival at the annual meeting.

The EarthView team poses with Wilbur Zelinksy, a world leader in cultural geography scholarship. (L to R: Vernon Domingo, Dr. Zelinsky, James Hayes-Bohanan, and Natalie Regan)

Dr. Michal LeVasseur, a leading geography educator and author who has worked with both National Geographic and the National Council for Geographic Education, points to the Andes Mountains.

Dr. Rick Bein of Indiana University and James Hayes-Bohanan pose in front of Brazil with Rodrigo Capelani, who was one of the first participants in BSC's US-Brazil Consortium on Urban Development (CAPES/FIPSE). Rodrigo completed a semester in Bridgewater before graduating from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. In May of this year, he will receive his master's degree from Miami University in Ohio, where Dr. Hayes-Bohanan received his master's in 1989.

Vernon Domingo (l) and James Hayes-Bohanan enjoyed showing EarthView to Kristin Alvarez, president of the National Council for Geographic Education and University of Redlands, California.

National Geographic intern Sarah Evans, who writes for the My Wonderful World blog, poses with EarthView team member James Hayes-Bohanan. My Wonderful World is an outreach program that -- thanks to creative geographers such as Sarah -- is doing a lot to build interest and enthusiasm around geography. Visit the My Wonderful World blog to find games, photos, maps, and videos that bring geography to life, and to participate in a nation-wide movement to expand geographic literacy. (Dr. Hayes-Bohanan first learned of the blog when it included a story about his teaching geography with coffee in 2008.)

Throughout the conference, geographers -- such as Christopher Shearer of National Geographic -- were encouraging each other to SPEAK UP for their discipline. At a time when the need to understand both human and physical geography could not be greater, the legislative and executive branches have failed to embrace geography as a key component of education. Meeting participants wrote letters urging the inclusion of geography in the reauthorized version of "No Child Left Behind" legislation. Without geography, many children will be left behind their peers in the rest of the world!

Along with a strong Geography Bowl appearance by student Kim Kirkwood and a number of research presentations by faculty members, EarthView ensured that the contribution of Bridgewater State College to the 2010 Annual Meeting will not soon be forgotten!

The perfect conclusion to a day of showing EarthView to thousands of geographers was being on hand when the AAG presented its first-ever Atlas Award to Dr. Jane Goodall. Her reflections on a lifetime of scholarship and humanitarian endeavors were deeply moving.

Long Branch Elementary, April 15

2010-04-16T06:22:00.000-04:00

38° 52' 28" N
77° 05' 23" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder! Use it to find the angular distance from Long Branch to your own home, to other schools we have visited, or to anywhere on earth! Or use it with an atlas to find the antipode to Long Branch or any other place.

While in Washington, DC to attend the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), members of the EarthView team were pleased to make their first visit to a school outside of Massachusetts.

Long Branch Elementary is located in Arlington, Virginia, directly across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia. Students and teachers at Long Branch showed a lot of enthusiasm for geography!

Long Branch students with follow-up questions are invited to post comments below.

Northeast Regional Conference on the Social Studies (NERC 2010)

2010-03-22T16:52:00.002-04:00

42° 06' 43" N
72° 05' 20" W
Thanks to Steve Morse for his wonderful lat/long finder!

The EarthView Team -- which includes three members of the Massachusetts Council on Social Studies -- is pleased to be sharing EarthView with our colleagues at NERC 2010. As both a social and natural science, geographers often collaborate with people in many other disciplines, and we are pleased to share EarthView with some of those colleagues at NERC.

We invite our fellow educators to visit our main EarthView web page for information about reserving EarthView, and to use the "comments" link below for any questions they have for the team.

Around the Americas

2010-03-22T16:33:00.001-04:00

Around the Americas is an educational scientific expedition that is ENCIRCLING both North and South America in a single oceanic voyage. Follow the progress of this incredible ship and its dedicated crew, as it explores both the diversity of ocean environments and the diversity of land-side ports of call.

Progress as of March 22, 2010:

Katie Spotz arriving in Guyana!

2010-03-14T10:54:00.000-04:00

This is a photo of Katie Spotz taken Sunday morning -- from land! Thanks to all of the EarthView students and teachers who have been following her progress with us and learning about the importance of fresh water.

By the time most of you read this, she will have successfully completed her SOLO CROSSING of the Atlantic Ocean in support of clean water.

Katie Spotz nearing arrival

2010-03-13T17:41:00.001-05:00

As of Saturday evening, Katie Spotz is very close to her goal of crossing the Atlantic in support of safe drinking water. Visit Row for Water to check her progress, read about all of her challenges and the water projects she is supporting -- and offer your own financial support if you can. She may be arriving as soon as Sunday, March 14!

Row for Water -- nearing the shore!

2010-03-11T11:31:00.000-05:00

The EarthView Team has been following the progress of Katie Spotz as she rows across the Atlantic in an effort to raise money for fresh-water projects. The team has personally contributed enough to provide a lifetime of fresh, clean water for eight people. Katie's overall goal is to provide this for 2,000 people -- she needs $60,000, and is very close to that target. If she exceeds the goal before she lands (and she is currently off the coast of Guyana), an anonymous donor will contribute an extra $5,000.

Read our earlier EarthView post about Katie to learn more about her project, and what it has to do with geography! If you donate, please consider mentioning EarthView when you do.

North Andover Middle School -- March 12 & 13

2010-03-10T16:54:00.004-05:00

See the math!
42° 41' 36" N

71° 07' 15" W
How many degrees, minutes, and seconds away is your house? Check Stephen Morse for any U.S. address, or an atlas or globe for other places throughout the world.

The EarthView team is delighted to be returning to North Andover Middle School, where we enjoyed a terrific visit last year. This time, we are visiting for two days, so that we can try more extensive programs with each group. This may allow us to develop alternative models for our presentations in future years.

Family commitments preclude Dr. Hayes-Bohanan from participating in the programs this time, but we are delighted that several Bridgewater State College geography students will be part of the EarthView team this time.

Members of the team will also be participating in a special geography family night with Mr. Poirier on Thursday.
We invite North Andover Middle School students to use the "comments" link below to send their geographic questions to the EarthView team!

For this visit, we have two days of Brainy History!

March 11:

1997 Beatle Paul McCartney knighted Sir Paul by the Queen
1990 Lithuania declares its Independence
1918 Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia
1918 Save the Redwoods League founded
1892 1st public basketball game (Springfield, Massachuetts)
1888 Great blizzard of '88 strikes the North East U.S.
1824 U.S. War Department creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs
1302 Romeo and Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare
March 12:
1994 Church of England ordains 1st 33 women priests
1993 Inkhata leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi begins 2-week speech
1990 Los Angeles Raiders announce they were returning to Oakland
1987 "Les Miserables" opens at Broadway/Imperial New York City for 4000+ performances
1985 Larry Bird scores Boston Celtic record 60 points
1984 National Union of Mine Workers in England begin a 51 week strike
1982 PLO chief Yassar Arafat appears on "Nightline"
1981 Walter R T Witschey installs world's largest sundial, Richmond, Virginia
1976 South African troops leave Angola
1970 U.S. lowers voting age from 21 to 18
1959 U.S. House joins Senate approving Hawaii statehood
1958 British Empire Day is renamed "Commonwealth Day"
1947 President Truman introduces Truman-doctrine to fight communism
1945 New York is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
1945 U.S.S.R. returns Transylvania to Romania
1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt conducts his 1st fireside chat
1930 Mohandas Gandhi begins 200m (300km) march protesting British salt tax
1867 Last French troops leave Mexico
1849 1st gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en route to California (before the Panama Canal, of course!)
1789 U.S. Post Office established
1773 Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable found settlement now known as Chicago
1755 1st steam engine in America installed, to pump water from a mine

More on Haiti and Chile earthquakes

2010-03-10T16:33:00.002-05:00

Please see this article on Bridgewater's Hope.Help.Haiti blog for links to more information about Chile and Haiti, including an interview with EarthView's own Dr. Domingo.

BSU-EarthView

Teachers of Teachers

Kermadec Quake

Pan-American Highway Tour

Rumney Marsh Art

Neither Niña nor Niño

Not Just French

Phil Cambell

Granite Valley Middle School in Monson -- June 17

Tantasqua Regional Jr. H.S. -- June 13

Weymouth -- June 3

Salem to Mongolia

Quabbin Middle School

Rumney Marsh Academy, Revere: May 20

Where is the Center?

Tide's Up!

Return to Wakefield -- May 13

GPS: Where We Are

Upcoming EarthView Visits

St. Joseph Elementary, Needham: May 6

Royal Wedding Geography

Tornadoes

W.H. Galvin Middle School, Canton -- April 29

42° 10' 05" N71° 07' 57" W

Biggest Seas

New Islands Discovered!

State House Coverage

SciGirls Expo - April 9

McCall Middle School, Winchester: April 8

Geobiblio Stunt

State House: April 4

Mass Geo Blog

What's the Best Projection?

Carver Middle High School - March 25

Mashpee Middle School -- March 18

41° 36' 57" N70° 30' 34" W

Mullein Hill Christian Academy -- March 15

41° 48' 39" N70° 58' 32" W

East Taunton Elementary, March 14

41° 52' 22" N71° 02' 41" W

Japan Science and Relief

Easy as Pi

Cacao Projection

Upcoming EarthView Visits

Galvin Middle School - Wakefield MA -- March 11

42° 30' 02" N71° 04' 10" W

Gordon Mitchell School, East Bridgewater -- March 4

42° 01' 50" N

Feb 11: H.H. Richardson School, North Easton

April 9: Sci-Tech at Mass Maritime

Ellis Island

North Andover Middle School -- Dec 16 & 17

Survivor Islands

Atlantic: Biography of an Ocean

Berkley Middle School

A Vast Ocean, Avast!

CIA map from thePerry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas

Kennedy Middle School, Woburn -- Dec 3

Trinity Catholic Academy, Brockton -- Nov 12

Largest Countries

Armenian Sisters' Academy, Lexington -- November 15

North Reading Middle School

Coincidence in the Ring of Fire?

Gordon Mitchell School, East Bridgewater -- October 22

Drying Lakes

Ahern Middle School - Foxborough - October 15

Circle of Illumination

World Daylight Clock on Your Desktop

Spofford Pond School, Boxford -- September 24

East Middle School in Braintree - Sept 17

South Middle School in Braintree -- September 10

Bridgewater State University

Latitude/Longitude Converters

Photos from Summer of Science program

Dartmouth Middle students journey to center of Earth

CONNECT Summer of Science -- Friday July 9

Shipwrecks of Boston Harbor

Happy Anniversary, Quabbin

Beyond Earth

State House Visit Success

CIA map from thePerry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
at the University of Texas