Year At A Glance

MBER Essentials

About the Year-Long Sequence

What is a Model?

Assessments

Setting the Stage for Success

colored-outlines-of-people-below-a-map-gerd-altmann

Human Impacts Project

Human Impacts Part 1

Being human is an amazing experience, and we are able to change our environment in unprecedented ways. But as the climate changes and environmental problems continue to get worse, we have to wonder what role we play in both the problem and the solution.

Could humans be the culprits of environmental change?

Formation of the Earth

Earth is an amazing and rather unique planet as far as we currently know-- a hospitable atmosphere, a globe covered in oceans, land and life. But how did it all start?

How did the Earth form?

Atmosphere and Oceans

The cooling, molten Earth was barren 4.4 billion years ago, but oceans of water and a protective atmosphere are precursors to life.

Where did the water and air come from?

Oxygen in the Atmosphere

Earth is a dynamic system that has changed over billions of years. Oxygen, necessary for life only existed at low levels in the early atmosphere. Today, it is necessary for all life.

Where did the oxygen come from?

Unity and Diversity

Life on Earth is so diverse and seemingly well adapted to the various environments on this planet. And yet there are basic characteristic commonalities among al living things.

How can we explain the commonalities among such diverse life on the planet?

Natural Selection

Biodiversity changes over time and species seem to change.

Why do traits change over time?

Extinction and Speciation

Changes in biodiversity require more time than natural selection can explain.

How do we make sense of the change in diversity over time?

geologic formations in the shape of a wave

Continent Formation

Recognizing that life eventually moved onto land requires that land exists. But the Earth started with only tiny volcanic islands poking above the vast oceans.

How did the continents form in a world of water?

Chemical Reactions

Students will explore where matter and energy comes from by building a model to explain how food can be transformed, by chemical reactions, to provide the matter and energy necessary for organisms to survive.

How are reactions important in biology?

Cellular Respiration

Students will develop a model that describes how food is rearranged through chemical reactions to form new molecules that can store and release energy.

How do organisms get energy from food?

Biosynthesis

We know that not all of the food we eat is used for energy. What happens to the rest of it?

How do we build necessary biomolecules?

Photosynthesis

We know what it takes for a human to live, what about plant life?

How do plants get matter and energy?

The Carbon Cycle

Carbon is central to our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth, human industry, and the current warming trend on the planet. In order to make progress on our understanding of our year-long driving question, we must engage this Symphony in C.

How does matter, and carbon in particular, flow through ecosystems?

Ecosystems

We established that all matter in the Ecosphere is recycled but is there anything we need to supply in order to keep organisms alive? What would happen if we put the Ecosphere in a drawer?

What happens to matter and energy in an ecosystem?

Meiosis

Parent cells duplicate their DNA and produce an identical set to pass to offspring, but how does it work? Do parents give ALL their DNA to each offspring?

Where does variation come from?

Classical Genetics

In sexual selection, we were left with the phenomenon that offspring resemble parents. How does this happen? How are traits passed from one generation to the next?

How are traits inherited?

DNA Structure and Function

What is the structure of the molecule that carries the genetic material? And how is the information stored in this molecule?

How are traits built?

Growth and Development

We now understand how DNA works, how chromosomes segregate during meiosis and how they join to form the first cell—zygote— of an organism. But how does that zygote become a fully formed organism?

How do organisms arise from one cell?

Evolution on a Changing Earth

In preparing to address our question about the role of humans on our changing planet, we take a moment to try and synthesize our understanding of how other life has responded to change.

How does life cope with change on a changing Earth?

Human Impacts Part 2

To finish the year, we revisit our driving question from months past. What have we learned about the role of humans in our changing planet?

How does the anthrosphere impact the others?

Dynamic, complex and a manifestation of cosmic history, our Earth is ever-evolving…

But how has life changed and changed this planet, making it like no other we know?

And as humans have evolved in the most recent, tiniest slice of time…

could we be the primary force setting the future trajectory of this unique and amazing place?