Secondary schools and colleges

Explore Your Planet is a bespoke programme to show how A level Biology, Chemistry, Geography, Geology, Environmental Science and Physics are both applicable and essential to the study of the Earth and the environment.

In our degrees in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, students apply their physics, maths, biology and chemistry skills by studying how the Earth formed and evolved, the processes controlling weather, climate and pollution, the evolution and ecology of ancient and modern life, how the natural resources we depend on are formed, as well as the driving forces behind natural disasters.

Upcoming events

9 November (1 - 4pm)

Meet Gorgie the Dinosaur, our very own theropod fossil, and attend an event dedicated to showing you how your A-Level subjects can prepare you for your studies in a range of exciting and challenging disciplines that remain vital to the future of our planet.

Our academics will be taking you through a range of engaging activities, and link the topics you are learning in your A-levels to their cutting-edge insights. By the end of the event you will be able to confidently know how the study of earth and environmental science is helping to transform the world around us for the better.

If you are a teacher, and would like to bring a small group of students with you, please get in touch with us to arrange this with our team. We also welcome parents and guardians, although ask that you limit guests to one per student.

For more information on our speakers, and the event, you can get in touch with earth.outreach@manchester.ac.uk. 

If you are interested in registering for this event, you can do so now through our booking form.

• Register now

Speakers

• Dr David Neave: Minerals, magmas and volcanic eruptions
• Prof. Phil Manning: Dinosaurs, Brains, Planes and Nuclear waste
• Prof. Katherine Joy: Meteorites and Moon rocks: what do they tell us about planetary scale geological processes?

The Global Warming activity is suitable as a focal point for visits to campus, for school workshops and science fairs.  It produces carbon dioxide through reaction of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate in a water solution, then channels the gas into a transparent bottle.  An infra-red lamp illuminates the bottle and a digital thermometer records the increased temperature due to carbon dioxide absorption of radiation.  It frames the science learnt in lessons in a clear and simple experiment that aids understanding.  Discussion about the science, related university study and careers, environmental consequences and politics naturally follow, facilitated by the university scientist but driven by the students.  Risk assessments are produced and verified for every activity.

Contact Dr Simon O'Meara with questions or to arrange a visit to your school/college or a visit to campus: simon.omeara@manchester.ac.uk.

TEDx Talk, Brighter Than A Billion Suns: Imaging Life On Earth 

Palaeontology is often viewed as a 'blue sky' science, one with little relevance, beyond Indiana Jones movie scripts, in the 21st Century. Phil Manning buries this prehistoric notion in a compelling talk that first and foremost reminds you just how totally cool scientific research can be. To wit: we can now harness synchrotron light, brighter than 10 billion suns, to view dilute concentrations of elements that played crucial roles in life, both present and past.

• Watch the talk

Mission Jurassic: Searching for Dinosaur Bones

A ten-year project in the badlands of Wyoming to uncover a plethora of dinosaur fossils is underway, and has received significant coverage from the BBC. 

As our graduate Jake Atterby attests, the project has involved University students working alongside leading palaeontologists, with many summers of work and new exiting discoveries ahead.

"There's probably enough dinosaur material here to keep a thousand palaeontologists happy for a thousand years" - Professor Phil Manning

• Watch the BBC coverage

You can read Professor Manning's article discussing Mission Jurassic, 'Excavating Jurassic Giants', in Geoscientist online. 

Earth and Solar System

The Earth and Solar System blog, and their podcast (The Cosmic Cast) reflect the research interests of the Isotope Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry Group at The University of Manchester. In our laboratories we study samples from comets, interstellar dust, interplanetary dust, Mars, the moon and asteroids to understand how the Earth and the Solar System were formed, how they evolved and became what we see today. We study the Earth and its chemistry to understand how it works, its mantle, crust, oceans and how we change it.

Both the blog and podcast are for sharing science. We want to share and discuss what we, and other research groups discover with everyone.

Links:

• Earth and Solar System blog
• Earth and Solar System YouTube channel

Educational Resources

Earth and Solar System have created some activities to learn about volcanoes, that can be safely repeated at home or school, using just foods and household items.

Each activity comprises a worksheet, notes for teachers/parents/carers, and a video demonstration of the experiment.

• Mantle in a Bottle
• Lava Flow Races
• Effusive Eruption
• Explosive Eruption

These activities are suitable for all ages, although they will probably work best with primary school or lower secondary school age groups. The parent/teacher notes accompanying the worksheets include some broad curriculum links for different age groups.

Welcome to our Earth: Its climate, history, and processes - Massive Open Online Course

Professor David Schultz facilitates this free online course. Develop a greater appreciation for how the air, water, land, and life formed and have interacted over the last 4.5 billion years.

The course can be taken for free at any time, or you can pay to gain a certificate upon successful completion of assignments. It is delivered online and you can find out more on the MOOC delivery website.

Here we provide links to general resources for teaching and learning:

Get a taste for earth and environmental sciences

These lectures formed part of our June 2020 undergraduate virtual open week. Now in a bitesize, accessible format, viewers can dip in to the subject that interests them most:

• Professor Grant Allen, 'Methane: the un-natural gas'
• Dr Stefan Schröeder, 'Studying Geology at Manchester'
• Dr Katherine Joy, 'Planetary Science on Earth: Fieldwork in unusual places'
• Dr Paul Connolly, 'What temperature does water freeze'
• Dr Catherine Walton, 'How and why we study natural ecosystems'
• Dr Neil Mitchell, 'The Himalayas, and new looks in Physical Geography'
• Dr Brendan McCormick Kilbride, 'Studying volcanoes from above'
• Dr Alison Pawley, 'Using mineral chemistry to understand volcanic eruptions'
• Dr Rob Sansom, 'The Real Jurassic Park'

Geology

• Why study: rocks KS3 – Zoe Cumberbatch, PhD Student, has produced this video as part of a workshop covering rock types and formation.
• GeoBus Youtube Channel – 1 minute videos explaining geological concepts
• North West Highland Geopark podcast
• Online interactive petrology course
• Virtual Microscope (mostly rock samples)
• Online database of rock outcrop images
• Online outcrop database and virtual fieldtrip
• Virtual geological fieldtrip (Columns of the Giants, California)
• V3Geo (virtual 3D models for the science community)

The Earth Project

The Earth Project’s aim is to showcase planet Earth and promote sustainable Earth stewardship. This will bring together the global community with experts, artists and scientists, combining data, technology and passion to spark the new thinking and innovation needed to solve some of the planet’s greatest social and environmental challenges.

Microbiology

PhD student Naji Bassil at the University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences has created an app that simulates bacterial growth under different pH and temperature conditions.

• Bacterial growth on a virtual Petri dish (set the pH and temperature of the experiment using the sliders and press play to observe extremophilic bacteria colonising the solid agar).

Dalton Nuclear Institute

The Dalton Nuclear Institute engagement pages can connect you with a variety of tools, games and information sources about nuclear energy. Resources include videos and lessons covering 'What is nuclear?', 'DECC 2050 game', 'UK Nuclear Education' and 'NeoK12'.

• Schools, colleges and the public - Dalton Nuclear Institute

Connected with the Dalton Nuclear Institute is work on social research at Sellafield. In a news item discussing the Sellafield Site Futures project, two Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences students are featured – Callum Robinson and Natalie Byrd. Robinson contributed sediment collected from the site to 'Future Font', a piece within Wallace Heim’s exhibition, x=2140, which considers the 120 year process of decommissioning the Sellafield Nuclear Plant in Cumbria. Byrd's images of cement taken under a scanning electron micros cope were incorporated into the piece 'Font No 1' to create texture.

Heim states that the core themes of the exhibition are the "philosophical questions of how to care for the lands, the soils, waters, elements, airs and living beings as they shift and migrate and settle over these coming generations of transformation and uncertainty".

You can read the article and see more photos of the exhibition at the link below:

• What does the future hold for Sellafield?

Recently, two new research papers have shown that microbes can actively colonise some of the most intensively radioactive waste storage sites in Europe. In these two new studies, a team of geomicrobiologists based in The University of Manchester’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, studied microbes that can potentially cause ‘summer blooms’ in a large outdoor spent nuclear fuel storage pond at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, the largest nuclear regulated site in the UK. Blooms reduce visibility, disrupt fuel retrieval and slow decommissioning. You can read more about this important new research and how it can help keep decommissioning programmes on schedule and within budget via the news item below:

• Sellafield research uncovers microbial life in fuel pond<

The Radioactive Waste Management Research Support Office launched in 2020. We spoke with Professor Francis Livens, Director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute, about the work of this office.

• Read about how universities are building an academic community for Radioactive Waste Management

Environmental science

Schmidt Ocean Institute provide a range of resources for 'deep sea distraction' including live broadcasts from research vessel Falkor. Broadcasts will focus on how scientists work in the lab on a ship, life at sea, and exciting findings. All live streams and connections can be viewed on Schmidt Ocean Institute’s YouTube Channel, Facebook page and website. 

Geography

The ‘dynamic rock cycle workshop’ developed for teaching the rock cycle in KS3 geography and science, has been developed by the Earth Learning Idea Team into an online workshop at:

• Earth Learning Idea

You can take part in the complete workshop by downloading and following the PowerPoint and its supporting booklet, or by accessing all the videos of the activities separately. Each activity is keyed into CASE principles through a video script, to enable the activities to teach thinking skills as well as knowledge and understanding. If you are unfamiliar with CASE, you can find out more on the website by accessing the videos on ‘Using CASE’ and ‘Atmosphere and ocean in a tank – an example using CASE’.