Earth Science 101: Middle School & High School Review/Tutor

An earth science review on spheres and location explains how Earth's oblate shape affects weight, true-scale models, atmospheric temperature zones, latitude and longitude basics, and time zone calculations.

Learn to draw isolines, including contour lines and isotherms, and calculate the gradient using map distances.

Explore topographic maps and profiles by constructing a line AB profile, labeling contour lines, and interpreting elevations, gradients, and river flow directions with emphasis on contour interval and feet units.

Engage in a deep space review that covers the universe's age, the big bang, the scale of celestial objects, redshift, galaxies, spiral galaxies, cosmic microwave background radiation, and spectral lines.

Explore the life cycle of stars—from nebula to main sequence, red giant to white dwarf—and how high-mass stars end as supernova, neutron star, or black hole using the HR diagram.

Explore the solar system by distinguishing rotation from revolution and examining terrestrial vs jovian planets, asteroid belt, and Pluto's status as a dwarf planet formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Examine kepler's three laws, showing ellipses with the sun at a focus, eccentricity shaping orbits, and speed variations with distance, plus longer periods farther from the sun.

Explore the three causes of seasons: tilt, revolution, and parallelism, along with Foucault’s pendulum and the Coriolis effect, and how direct sunlight defines solstices and equinoxes.

Plot the sun's path on the celestial sphere for 42° north, mastering sunrise and sunset directions and solar noon altitude, and how equinox and tilt shape seasonal paths.

Explore the moon’s formation from a giant impact, why its rotation matches its orbit, and the 29.5-day cycle of phases, tides, and eclipses.

Explore the electromagnetic spectrum, learning how wavelength order affects energy from the sun, and examine specific heat and phase changes, including melting, vaporization, and condensation, with practical problems.

Explain the greenhouse effect and the three forms of heat transfer, conduction, convection, and radiation, using examples of insulators, greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, water vapor), and infrared heat.

Explore humidity within the earth science weather unit, detailing the water cycle, evaporation, transpiration, dew point, relative humidity, cloud formation, and how temperature affects moisture in the air.

Explore air pressure and station models using six weather instruments, learn pressure conversions between millibars and inches of mercury, and master high and low pressure patterns.

Explore how unequal solar heating drives global and local winds, from sea and land breezes to jet streams, and how pressure gradients and isobars shape weather across regions.

Explore air masses and fronts, including continental polar and maritime tropical from Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, and how cold, warm, stationary, and occluded fronts shape precipitation.

Explore the orographic effect and lake effect snow, distinguish windward and leeward sides, and study monsoons, El Niño/La Niña, hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and blizzards with safety planning.

Master minerals by using reference table page 16 to identify luster, hardness, cleavage or fracture, color, and streak, and explore silicate minerals and silicon tetrahedrons.

Explore the rock cycle and how igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks form through heat and pressure, deposition and burial, and melting, with chart-based practice on textures, composition, and key minerals.

Explore physical weathering processes that break rocks into pieces, including frost action and wedging, abrasion, root growth, and temperature expansion and contraction, with examples of rock resistance and particle transport.

Chemical weathering creates new substances through reactions like rust and calcite dissolution by carbonic acid, forming caves and changing materials.

This lecture explains how soil forms from weathered rock and decayed organic matter, creating topsoil with humus and horizons. It also notes transported vs residual soils and climate's role.

Explore how groundwater forms underground water from rain and melting snow, and how infiltration, aquifers, the water table, and saturation and aeration zones shape its flow.

Explore porosity in groundwater, learning how the space between sediment particles determines how much water a soil or rock can hold, including factors like shape, packing, and sorting.

Explore permeability, the ease with which water moves through materials, and how particle size and pore connectivity determine flow, as shown by pebbles to clay.

Explore how erosion moves sediment through gravity, wind, water, and glaciers, with mass movements, dunes, rivers, V-shaped valleys, U-shaped valleys, and striations.

Explore how rivers carve landscapes through velocity, discharge, slope, and sediment sorting, and how glaciers form U-shaped valleys, moraines, outwash plains, and drumlins.

Explore how longshore currents shape beaches, cause erosion and deposition, and form features like groins, jetties, and barrier islands; understand landscape regions and drainage patterns.

Explores the theory of plate tectonics, detailing the lithosphere and plate boundaries, evidence for Pangaea, subduction, seafloor spreading, hotspots, and how fossils reveal Earth's dynamic crust.

Identify the earthquake epicenter and focus, compare p waves and s waves with a seismograph, locate epicenters with three stations, and note magnitude and tsunami potential.

Explore how to determine rock ages using radioactive decay and relative dating, apply half-lives with the fat chart, read the geologic time scale, and identify index fossils.