Grade Level: High School
Format: Virtual
Duration: Full academic year
Welcome to CoYOTe AtTeNTiON's Earth and Physical Sciences, where students embark on a journey through the natural world guided by the wisdom and adaptability of the coyote. Just as coyotes navigate diverse terrains across North America, students will explore the fundamental principles of Earth's systems, physical sciences, and the interactions between humans and their environment.
The coyote - resilient, adaptable, and widely distributed across diverse landscapes - serves as our metaphorical guide. Like the coyote who must understand its territory to thrive, students will develop comprehensive knowledge of Earth's dynamic systems and the physical forces that shape our world.
Students will track the "paw prints" of Earth's history by examining tectonic processes, analyzing crustal rock ages, and developing models that illustrate Earth's internal and surface processes. Like coyotes who adapt to changing landscapes, students will explore how Earth's features form and change over different spatial and temporal scales.
Just as coyotes understand their place in the food web, students will model energy transformations in photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Mathematical representations will be used to analyze energy flow and matter cycling within ecosystems, connecting the physical and biological dimensions of our planet.
Students will investigate the atomic structure that underlies all matter, using the periodic table to predict properties and behavior of elements. Through laboratory investigations, students will explore chemical reactions, bonding, and how molecular structure determines the properties of materials that coyotes and humans encounter in their environments.
Examining the physics that governs movement across the landscape, students will analyze Newton's laws and investigate collisions, forces, and energy transfers. Like studying how a coyote leaps or runs, students will design and refine devices that minimize force during collisions.
Students will create computational models to calculate energy changes within systems and develop devices that convert energy between forms. Investigations will include thermal energy transfer and the laws of thermodynamics that govern all energy exchanges in the coyote's territory and beyond.
From the howl of a coyote to digital information transmission, students will explore wave properties and evaluate the advantages of digital information storage and transfer in modern society.
Students will analyze how natural resource availability, hazards, and climate change influence human activity, much like how coyotes adapt to changing environments. Engineering challenges will include designing solutions to complex environmental problems while considering constraints and trade-offs.
Join the CoYOTe AtTeNTiON pack and develop the adaptability, resilience, and understanding needed to navigate our complex world through the integrated study of Earth and physical sciences.