[school-discuss] preview : please comment on content list. teacher's notes, planning, assignments, testing, learning units, etc ... being addressed for the first time in the series.

[mike eschman <meschman@etc-edu.com>]

An Introductory course in the Solar System with Lesson plans for Math and 
Chemistry 
(4th of a series) - exclusive to SchoolForge ----> 
http://www.opensourceschools.org. 

     Earth : There's no place like home. : The Earth is sacred because it is 
the only place we have to stand on. [ from "The Shoes of the Fisherman" ]

A series of original notes by mike eschman of etc ...@2003 
For use by anyone with the need or inclination, exclusive to SchoolForge. 
ref : "Encyclopedia of the Solar System" 
Weissman, McFadden and Johnson; Academic Press, ISBN 0-12-226805-9. 

Earth. 

learning units : 
1-What does a radio-based civilization look like?
2-Convection.
3-viscosity.
4-buoyancy.
5-How can you learn to recognize the presence of the gravitational constant, 
measuring effects.


supplemental materials required to teach a unit :

copies of these notes.
accompanied web site.
broadcasts.
download and burn CDs.
teacher's copy of Encyclopedia of the Solar System.
The movies Contact, Forbidden Planet.
other possibilities include Star Trek IV, The Arrival, The Mothman Prophesies.

Guide to preparing test materials---> planning assignments, verifying 
results[testing].

To understand this story of the Earth, the student must be comfortable with 
the notions of buoyancy, viscosity and convection.  Everything is explained 
in terms of applications of the gravitational constant in plotting changes in 
pressure and temperature, and other arguments that teach important tools of 
analysis.  The movie "Contact" starring Jodie Foster has important insights 
into the ways arguments of radio-based civilization evolve over time.  Some 
material may be sensitive, requiring an edited version for demonstration.

Earth orbits the Sun in the narrow distance range within which water occurs in 
all three of its phases : solid ice caps, liquid oceans and atmospheric water 
vapor.  The total amount of dry land on Earth is about equal to the surface 
of Mars, but the oceans cover most of Earth's surface.  

Earth's lithosphere is broken into eight major plates and several minor ones 
that move relative to each other.  The plate boundaries are associated with 
regions of active mountain building, earthquakes and volcanic activity.   

Earth has no ring system. 

Earth has a large satellite. 

About 140 impact craters have been identified on Earth's surface to date. 

The presence of intelligent life on Earth can be discerned by stable radio 
wavelength signals emanating from the planet.  They do not match naturally 
occurring signals, but do contain regular pulsed modulations that are the 
signature of information exchange.  Global biological activity is indicated 
by atmospheric gases in extreme thermodynamic dis-equilibrium and the 
widespread presence of a pigment that does not match the spectral signature 
of any known rock or minerals.  The atmosphere has a troposphere at the 
bottom, a stratosphere in the middle, and a thermosphere at the top.  Earth 
has the usual east-west organization of winds, but with north-south and 
temporal fluctuations larger than anywhere else in the Solar System. 

Earth has a strong magnetic field generated by fluid motion in its liquid 
iron-nickle core, and has an active magnetosphere. 

Interplanetary Spacecraft Evidence for Life. 

There are some weak indications that life in our Solar System may have once 
existed, or even now exists, outside of Earth.  However, to date we have no 
direct evidence for extra-terrestrial life. 

Are the interplanetary spacecraft we have sent out capable of fulfilling the 
goal of detecting life?  The question has been tested by analyzing data from 
the Galileo spacecraft's two fly-by encounters with Earth.  The idea was to 
compare ground-truth information to what we learned solely from Galileo.  
Galileo's first Earth encounter occurred on December 9, 1990, with closest 
approach 960 km above the Caribbean Sea; its second Earth encounter occurred 
on December 8, 1992, with closest approach 302 km above the South Atlantic. 

A total of almost 6000 images were taken.  The spacecraft's instruments made 
several important observations that point to life on Earth.  The evidence for 
life on Earth includes complex radio emissions, non-mineral surface 
pigmentation, disequilibrium in the atmospheric chemistry, and large oceans. 

Radio Emissions. 

The only clear evidence for intelligent life on Earth was unusual radio 
emissions.  The unusual signals were narrow band emissions that occurred in 
only a few distinct channels and had average frequencies that remained stable 
for hours.  Naturally occurring radio emissions nearly always drift in 
frequency.   

The individual components had complicated modulations in amplitude that have 
never been detected in naturally occurring emissions.   

the captain of the (sic) "Balar-a-thon" space craft in Forbidden Planet gets 
scanned by powerful radio emissions!


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