How Deep is the Ocean?

Elementary schoolers identify the ocean floor in a geological sense. They create a presentation that highlights the key features of the ocean floor. This terrific lesson plan has excellent streaming video segments embedded in it, and the...

How can organisms light up in water? Bioluminescence is light produced in a chemical reaction that can occur in an organism's body. First, learners determine what happens to light/color as you move into the deep ocean. In groups, they...

How is it possible for ocean water to have layers? The sixth installment of a 23-part NOAA Enrichment in Marine sciences and Oceanography (NEMO) program investigates factors that cause different water densities to occur. Experiments...

Take young scientists into the depths of the world's ocean with the second lesson of this three-part earth science series. After first drawing pictures representing how they imagine the bottom of the ocean to appear, young scholars...

How do you create a map of the ocean floor without getting wet? Middle school oceanographers discover the process of bathymetric mapping in the third installment in a five-part series of lessons designed for seventh and eighth graders....

Salty sailors in days gone by used to speak of the seven seas. What they didn't know was that their world was one big ocean! Seaworthy scholars climb aboard an adventure that features the major ocean currents during a lesson from PBS's...

Take a submersible down to the seafloor. As you descend, passing through the ocean's sunlight, twilight, and midnight zones, you can observe how temperature, pressure, and light levels change. When your submersible reaches the seafloor,...

Much like a distant planet, the underwater world of deep-sea benthos is strange and largely unknown. How do creatures survive and thrive in such extreme pressure and temperature conditions? Young oceanographers join the crew of Operation...

Detailed website that was a companion to a 1995 traveling exhibit of the Smithsonian. Links to lesson plans and other educational materials are at the bottom of the page. Enter the exhibition to explore the world of the ocean.

Come take a peak at the corals in the deep. Science scholars discover the hidden world of deep-sea corals in the third installment of a 13-part series. Topics include the differences between shallow water and deep-sea corals, the slow...