BBC Earth: Your Life on Earth

WEBSITE ↬ BBC Earth: Your Life on Earth
AUDIENCE ↬ teachers, students

CONTENT ↬ science, history, writing

GRADE LEVELS ↬ all grades

My sister, Monica, gets the credit for this one. She shared this website awhile back figuring I'd enjoy it. She was right!

On the main page, it states "Our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years. But how has it changed in your lifetime?" Now, how on earth!?!? Right there, I was intrigued. I entered the minimum required information (my birthdate), clicked enter, and voila! A whole page devoted to changes in the earth since I was born. How cool is that? Customized just for me :)

Here is an overview of some of the cool tidbits I found:

• "How the world has changed" ↬ there have been 218 major eruptions, 88 solar eclipses, the Golden-crowned sifaka was discovered 4 years before I was born ... & more!
• "How we have changed the world" ↬ the sea level has risen by 10 cm, on average, and extra 11 cups of coffee is available, CO2 emissions have doubled, the Mountain gorilla is no longer extinct ... and more!
• "How you have changed" ↬ my heart has beaten 2 billion times (but a blue whale's heart the same age would only have beaten 128 million times), if I lived on Mercury I'd be 166 years old, but on Neptune I'd still be waiting another 45,367 days to turn ONE!!!!, a mouse my age would have 270 generations by now ... and more!!!!

My brain is going in a bunch of different directions with all this info! These are really awesome tidbits but I can 100% see using this page to do some writing or further investigating. The more I clicked around, I noticed I could change some of the comparisons. Example, rather than comparing my heart beats to a blue whale, I could swap it out with a hummingbird. I am WAY older on Mercury than I am on Neptune. As a student, I could investigate the differences and write about it. So much here! And it's personal to me ... it could be personal to each of your students. Super cool!!!