The ocean is part of our lives – we may swim in it, sail on it or eat food from it. Many aspects of the ocean affect us – it controls climate, supports life, wears away land, and provides ...
Explore this interactive diagram to learn more about the global carbon cycle.
Feeding relationships are often shown as simple food chains – in reality, these relationships are much more complex, and the term ‘food web’ more accurately shows the links between producers ...
The ocean plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. Carbon moves in and out of the ocean daily, but it is also stored there for thousands of years. The carbon cycle Carbon is a chemical ...
‘Wave’ is a common term for a number of different ways in which energy is transferred: In electromagnetic waves, energy is transferred through vibrations of electric and magnetic fields. In sound ...
There are many chemicals in seawater that make it salty. Most of them get there from rivers carrying chemicals dissolved out of rock and soil. The main one is sodium chloride, often just called ...
Explore this interactive diagram to learn more about life in the sea. Click on the different labels to view short video clips or images about different parts of the marine ecosystem.
On 5 October 2011, the cargo vessel Rena ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef. The ship was carrying 1700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and about 200 tonnes of diesel in its tanks. Over 360 tonnes of ...
The density of seawater plays a vital role in causing ocean currents and circulating heat because of the fact that dense water sinks below less dense. Salinity, temperature and depth all affect ...
This interactive looks at the electromagnetic spectrum. To use this interactive, move your mouse or finger over any of the labelled boxes and select to obtain more information. Select here for a ...
Seeing, hearing, feeling warmth, surfing, tuning the radio, using a cellphone – these and many more activities involve waves. But what is a wave? In this article, we get to grips with the ...
The temperature of the ocean determines what form the water takes. Most of the ocean is liquid water, but if it gets cold enough, it turns to solid ice, or if it gets hot enough, it can pass into ...
Seawater has many different gases dissolved in it, especially nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. It exchanges these gases with the atmosphere to keep a balance between the ocean and the ...
All waves behave in certain characteristic ways. They can undergo refraction, reflection, interference and diffraction. These basic properties define the behaviour of a wave – anything that ...
Water in the Earth system is influencing all aspects of life on Earth. Pathways, storage, transfers and transformations have an effect on the global climate and human welfare. Within this ...
Water density changes with temperature and salinity. Density is measured as mass (g) per unit of volume (cm³). Water is densest at 3.98C and is least dense at 0C (freezing point). Why does ice ...
Sea stars have many weird and wonderful adaptations - including some unusual internal systems. Click on any of the labels in this interactive to view short video clips or images to learn more.
Being able to adapt is a matter of life or death. In a perfect world, organisms would not need to adapt. However, changes to the environment and food web mean that organisms need to move, if they ...
Sea stars have many weird and wonderful adaptations including both sexual and asexual reproduction. Click on any of the labels in this interactive to view short video clips or images to learn ...
In this activity, students build their own food web using images of organisms from the marine ecosystem. This activity can be done indoors on paper or outdoors on a tarmac surface using chalk. By ...
Cold water is denser than warm water, so it tends to sink. Seawater is denser than freshwater. Salinity, temperature and depth all affect the density of seawater. The ocean has a complex ...
The Earth’s continents have not always been where they are at present. If you look at a map of the world, you might notice what Alfred Wegener noticed – that the continents look as if they could ...
The ocean has a complex circulation system, moving water, heat, salt and nutrients around the world. Surface currents in the top 400 m are driven mainly by wind. Deeper currents are driven by ...
The ocean plays an important part in several Earth systems and cycles. This is hardly surprising, as it covers two-thirds of the planet’s surface. It is difficult to study any of these systems ...
