Atmosphere Activities

In this activity, students move chips representing sunlight, heat, and infrared radiation around a series of boards representing Earth and its atmosphere. Students learn how models are constructed and work, and learn about layers of Earth's atmosphere and the greenhouse effect.

Air takes up space. It's only when air in the bottle escapes that more air is easily added!

Find out how some wavelengths of light are scattered more than others producing blue skies and red sunsets.

Students observe that a change in the temperature of air can impact the size of a bubble placed on a bottle that is cooled and/or heated.

Use jelly beans to compare the compositions (amounts of different gases) of the atmospheres of Earth, Mars, and Venus.

Students will observe two scale models of Earth's atmosphere and the layers of the atmosphere to gain an appreciation for the size of the atmosphere compared to the planet Earth.

Students use a model to test actions for staying safe from the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. 

This teaching box will help your students understand how conservation of energy determines the average temperature of a planet, including Earth. These activities also illustrate how the greenhouse effect prevents our home planet from becoming a frozen ball of ice!

This teaching box provides resources related to the greenhouse effect. It will help you teach how the greenhouse effect warms our planet.

Students observe how different materials bend light and how we can infer the nature of the material based on the amount it bends light rays.

In this activity, students use models to observe that air is a fluid that flows due to temperature-driven density differences.

In this hands-on activity, students explore how temperature affects the behavior of air molecules.

Students learn how to crush a can with only air pressure.

Use plungers to create a vacuum and learn about how air exerts pressure.

Learn about Bernoulli's Principle with hairdryers and ping pong balls!

In this computer-based virtual lab, students will learn about the layers of Earth's atmosphere by launching virtual balloons to collect temperature and pressure data at various altitudes. Given a limited number of balloon flights, students must plan carefully to gather data that generates a good "picture" of the atmosphere’s structure.