'Atmosphere and ocean in a lunchbox; a model for all pupils – of hot, cold and cloudy density currents

This ELI develops an earlier teacher demonstration in 'Atmosphere and ocean in a tank' into a smaller-scale model for pupil group use.

It explains how warm ocean water, or warm air, rises upwards while cold ocean water or cold air, sinks. It then demonstrates how density currents flow in the water, or air, and can be used as an analogy of density currents in the oceans and atmosphere.

Related activities can be found in our Oceanography category.

   

Our new very exciting ELI today is 'The invisible plastic problem – can you find what the eye can’t see? - finding microplastics in the local environment using simple separation techniques'.

This activity introduces pupils to environmental sampling and density separation. It demonstrates how a saturated salt solution can be used to isolate microplastics from soil or sediment and shows how pollution can be studied using simple materials.

Other activities in this category can be found in 'Environment'.

   

 Have you tried 'Counting to one million? - trying to imagine the enormity of geological time'.

This Earthlearningidea is an activity to help young children to understand deep time.

Related activities can be found in our Geological Time category - Visualising deep time.

   

And now for something completely different - such is the scope of Earthlearningideas. 'How many sand grains are there in a bucket – or on a beach? - planning activities to estimate the number of sand grains in a bucket – or on a beach'.

More Earthlearningideas involving some maths can be found in our Cross Category topics - Maths in ELIs

   

Last week, we published 'Make your own bricks'. Today we have, 'Make your own soil; investigating the type and origin of the ingredients of soil'.

This activity can be used in any lesson about the environment, rocks and landscape, agriculture, gardening or investigations out of doors.

Go to ELI Early years for related activities.