Geomagnetism in the MESA Classroom: An Essential Science for Modern Society

What:  A four-part after-school module that allows students to explore geomagnetism with compasses, navigation exercises, and a caching activity, followed by a field trip to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder.

Image source: Earth science:Geomagnetic reversals, David Gubbins, Nature 452, 165-167(13 March 2008)

Grade Levels:  10-12

Cost:  Free

Time Needed:  One 90-minute in-class session

Students will receive

• an overview of the Earth’s magnetic field, and
• an airline course-plotting exercise with maps featuring adjustment for the magnetic field variations in different locations.

One 90-minute indoor/outdoor session

• Students will receive an introductory activity reviewing the use of a compass
• Students will split into teams, each using bearing compasses to construct a navigation route to a cache goal; the teams will then follow another team’s navigation instructions to find the cache.

One 60-minute in-class session

Students will receive

• An introduction to the effect of solar activity on the magnetic field (including a brief aurora video),
• An in-class scientist speaker
• An exercise to plot the places where a large aurora was seen

One 3-hour field trip to Boulder to NOAA’s David Skaggs Research Center

Guided tour of the Space Weather Predictions Center, where students will see live real-time data of the geomagnetic field; the students will also view the Science on a Sphere (SOS) exhibit facility which can project the Earth’s geomagnetic field on a suspended sphere as well as showing solar activity and satellite views of Earth.

Applicable Science Education Standards

Magnetic forces are very closely related to electric forces—the two can be th9ought of as different aspects of a single electromagnetic force.  Both are thought of as acting by means of fields:  an electric charge has an electric field in the space around it that affects other charges, and a magnet has a magnetic field around it that affects other magnets.  What is more, moving electric charges produce magnetic fields and are affected by magnetic fields.  This influence is the basis of many natural phenomena.  For example, electric currents circulating in the earth’s core give the earth an extensive magnetic field, which we detect from the orientation of our compass needles.

--American Association for the Advancement of Science (1989). Science for All Americans. New York: Oxford, p. 56.

Electric and magnetic forces and the relationship between them ought also to be treated qualitatively.  Fields can be introduced, but only intuitively.  Most important is that students get a sense of electric and magnetic force fields (as well as of gravity) and of some simple relations between magnets and electric currents.  ...   Diagrams of electric and magnetic fields promote some misconceptions about “lines of force,” notably that the force exists only on those lines.  Students should recognize that the lines are used only to show the direction of the field.

--American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993). Benchmarks for Science Literacy. New York: Oxford, p. 93.

Electric currents in the earth’s interior give the earth an extensive magnetic field, which we detect from the orientation of compass needles. 

--American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007). Atlas of Science Literacy Volume 2. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, p. 27.

For more information on this MESA program, contact: