Monday 15 March 2010

New ELI+ - Magnetic Earth

Try out latest Earthlearningidea with your pupils - 'Magnetic Earth - modelling the magnetic field of the Earth' At the end of the activity pupils should be able to:-
- locate the North and South poles of a hidden bar magnet;
- identify which pole is North and which is South;
- plot the three dimensional field of the magnet;
- relate the model to the bipolar magnetic field of the Earth;
- describe how, when rocks retain the direction of the magnetic field at the time they formed, this information can be used to work out the latitude of the region at that time.
This is one of many Earth-related activities you can find on our website.

1 comment:

Mary from New Mexico said...

Used Magnetic Earth as a demonstration to show the magnetic field of the Earth and because of an 'error' on my part got a bonus teaching idea. I put a bar magnet in a ball composed of Play-doh, a clay that will dry out. The surface of the Play-doh balled dried out and cracked. The interior was still soft and pliable. Good demonstration of the difference in behavior of crust and mantle. One was brittle and cracked while the interior was still plastic.