Data Tips with this icon contain special step-by-step Microsoft Excel graphing instructions for advanced levels.

Tsunami - On Saturday, December 25, 2004 an underwater earthquake caused tsunamis to crash into coasts around the Indian Ocean basin, claiming over 100,000 lives. What are the underlying physical and geological forces that create these devastating natural phenomena?

Ooze Clues - Just as ocean beaches display a variety of sediment types, the ocean floor may be made of sand, rock, remains of living organisms, or other material. With this data tip, learn about the distribution of diatoms, radiolaria and foraminifera and about the carbonate compensation depth, then predict where calcareous and siliceous oozes are distributed on the ocean floor.

What's In Your Watershed? Do you know your watershed address? Everybody has one, and it's an important address to know, because we each impact our watershed. To better understand the effects of human activity on the Chesapeake Bay watershed, this data activity looks at land cover data and the results of buffer laws on riparian buffers for several areas in the watershed.

Plate Tectonics - For centuries, people pondered over the fact that the continents' edges seem to fit together like puzzle pieces. Scientists and naturalists offered many explanations for this. Over time these theories, supported by fossil and paleoclimatology records, evolved into the modern day theory of plate tectonics. Let your students be the scientists as they use underwater earthquake data to identify plate boundaries.

  Coastal Erosion: Where's the Beach? - Erosion and accretion of coastal sediments are the two processes that keep our beaches in a constant state of change. May's data tip looks at some of the natural and not-so-natural factors influencing these processes. Conduct your own beach profile or access profile data from a Maryland beach and plot the changes over time for a graphic illustration of these processes.