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We have annotated several hundred teaching resources cataloged in the National Science Digital Library with spatial concept terms listed below. We have also created a new TeachSpatial collection annotated in the same way. The concept terms were drawn from the U.S.National Science Education Standards (NSES 1996) for topic areas B - Physical Science, C - Life Science, D - Earth and Space Science, as well as from the 1994 U.S. Geography Teaching Standards for grades 9-12. Those standards can be browsed here.

spatial concept terms

NSDL teaching resources related to "scale"

In this activity, users arrange objects according to size, with musical feedback. This game describes the building blocks of nature and their scale.

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Can You Play Nature’s Scale?

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This article describes research on systems made up of small granular pieces, such as sand piles or containers of grain. In these "Collective" systems, the interactions of each of the grains with a few neighbors determines the properties of large systems.

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Physics in Action: Granular Materials

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This article describes the world's smallest guitar, and other work on the construction of objects on the scale of nanometers (10-9 meters). This site includes discussion of future applications of this technology as well as images and links to research and further information.

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Physics in Action: Building at the Nanoscale

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This site consists of a series of pages, each depicting and describing an object(s) on a different order of magnitude. There are 42 pages of this in all, for 42 powers of ten, starting with quarks (10^-14 meters) and ending with 'near the limit of our knowledge' (10^25 meters). The pictures 'zoom out,' with the quarks being part of a proton being part of a nucleus, and so on. There are short descriptions for each of the physics-related objects (i.e. quarks, atoms, clusters) and some of the locations, as well as links to more extensive descriptions. Also included is a page on units and scales.

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A Question of Scale: Quark to Quasars

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This guide to a workshop for primary teachers provides an introduction to the concepts of mixing of atoms and the relation between microscopic and macroscopic behaviors. It is designed to provide teachers with an inquiry-based learning experience to the basic concepts of the properties of atoms and basic chemistry. It is part of the Operation Primary Physical Science materials.

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OPPS: Mixing Matter

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This is chapter one of an on-line NASA book, Geomorphology from Space - A General Overview of Regional Landforms. It is divided into four sections and a conclusion. The first section, The Nature of Geomorphology, starts with the definition and continues with a description of the scales involved, fundamental concepts and the role of geomorphic studies. Types of Geomorphic Analysis is the title for the second section and it includes process studies and system analysis, climate geomorphology, and structural geomorphology.

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Introduction: Regional Landform Analysis

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Remotely Sensed Data

DATA: Planetary images and geodesy data. TOOL: UNAVCO's Jules Verne Voyager Map Server. SUMMARY: Generate maps of Earth or any of 19 other planets and moons. Save and import images into presentations or reports.

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Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Creating Custom Map Images of Earth and Other Worlds

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This applet is designed to teach students how bin widths (or the number of bins) affect a histogram. The data consists of observations of the duration (in minutes) for eruptions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Students can interactively change the bin width by dragging the arrow underneath the bin width scale. For large bin widths, the bimodal nature of the dataset is hidden, and for small bin widths the plot reduces to a spike at each data point.

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Histogram Applet

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This is a fun online activity that introduces learners to the size and scale of objects around them, including things at the nano scale. Learners will have to arrange images based on their size from the smallest to the biggest.

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How Small is Small

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This website is a fact sheet of the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) Mapping Applications Center. It explains, with examples, why map scales are necessary, what they do, and how they work. It also discusses common scales that the USGS uses on their topographic maps.

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Map Scales

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