Several days were set aside to work with the CD-ROM, Our Dynamic Planet, created at UC Santa Barbara by Dr. William Prothero. The students used the Profile Game to identify unknown features. Above left is a profile drawn across an island. The students investigated unknown features using the programs' tools, and then answered questions about that feature. Their answers were automatically scored by the program and any mistakes are pointed out.

Above left is a profile across a ridge. To the right is an oblique view of a depression. This program has many useful tools, and students were able to investigate the features using several views of different orientation.

Another feature of Our Dynamic Planet is a map activity. This activity contains a vast amount of information which was easily accessible to the student. Some of the information that students accessed were elevation, earthquake, and volcano databases. Above, students are shown working on the Map activity.

In the activity above, two different types of convergent margins were being investigated. On the left is a convergent boundary where oceanic lithosphere is subducted beneath continental lithosphere, giving rise to the volcanic Andes Mountain chain. On the right is a collision zone where two continental lithospheric plates (India into Asia) have crashed into each other, forming the Himalayan Mountains. At the bottom of each image, the profile is displayed. When students viewed the profiles, they discovered that the oceanic lithosphere was more dense, and therefore floated lower in the asthenosphere than the continental lithosphere. In the left hand profile, you can actually see the trench which is formed when oceanic lithosphere is subducted beneath continental lithosphere.

Above left, a student added the volcano database and was in the process of adding the earthquake database to the subduction zones (Aleutian, Kamchatka, and Kuril) in the northern Pacific Ocean. To the right is a view of the northwestern United States with the volcano data.