Ocean Circulation
Over the past few weeks we’ve been studying the oceans and in particular how the water circulates around the globe. This is important to understand as these currents affect our climate and aquatic food chains. Plus you’ll use this information in your Chapter Challenge.
We’ve watched a video, experimented with changing the density of water (by changing the temperature and salinity), tracked floating sneakers, examined wind patterns and their affect on currents, and developed a better understanding of gyres and basic oceanic currents.
I hope the PowerPoint review presentation in class today helped to pull some of these topics together. To develop an even better understanding I’ve put together some additional resources. Remember you can always check out either of our textbooks at the Media Center.
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u have online access to the Prentice Hall Earth Science Textbook. Click on the textbook image. The user id is: lms123 and the password is: lakeview. Click on “HS Earth Science -2006″ and the table of contents will appear. Scroll down to Chapter 16 Dynamic Ocean, click on that and review 1. Ocean Circulation. When you are done with that go to Chapter 15 Ocean Water and Ocean Life and review 1. The Composition of Seawater. Be sure when you are using this resource not to change the user profile id or password.
Another resource is Oceans Alive. This site provides a greater variety of information but less detail. It’s a good site to get a bigger picture.
If you’ve been to the Home Study page in the last week or so then you should have noticed the Ocean Currents Online link. This is a much more in depth study, but it provides some audio and video advantages (less reading for you). Click the image to the right to begin this learning guide.