Datasets from the Web
How does precipitation vary with the seasons?
All terms: Atmosphere, Earth Science, Data
How has the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide changed over the past 2,000 years? Maybe it matters where you are in the world.
All terms: Atmosphere, Earth Science, Data
Data for variables such as air temperature and pressure as a balloon ascends into the atmosphere.
All terms: Atmosphere, Earth Science, Data
Do men or women clock faster marathon times? Which gender group has improved the most over the last 50 years?
All terms: Life Science, Sports, Data
Is the number of chromosomes a species has related to its size? Do animal species have more chromosomes than plant species have?
All terms: Life Science, Comparing Groups, Correlations, Humans, Data
How variable are the sizes (lengths) of organs that are part of the human digestive tract?
All terms: Life Science, Humans, Data
Here are two files with earthquake data. The second one is broken down into smaller data sets (slightly simpler for middle school students to use).
All terms: Comparing Groups, Lithosphere, Earth Science, Data
How does the price of gas at the pump compare between the U.S. and European countries?
All terms: Energy, Time Series, Physical Science, Data
How can you tell the difference between a hurricane and a tropical storm? How hard does the wind really blow during a hurricane? Check out this dataset for some great weather data!
All terms: Atmosphere, Earth Science, Data
Open this dataset to see when in the spring Maine lakes have lost their ice during the last two hundred years!
All terms: Earth Science, Data
How many fish do you think you would catch if you went fishing in a Maine lake? What factors might determine your success? Perhaps you'll want to look at this dataset before you head out to the shore or in a boat!
All terms: Life Science, Ecology, Data
Mercury concentrations in blood and feather samples of banded loons from NY and ME lakes. Data collected and generously provided by the BioDiversity Research Institute.
All terms: Animals, Life Science, Data
This file contains income, population, area and location information about Maine's counties.
All terms: 6-8, Comparing Groups, 9+, Data, Other
Do you like to fish? Have you ever seen an American eel? Even if you say "no" to both of these questions, here's an interesting data set about a type of fish that means a lot to some people in Maine.
All terms: Animals, Life Science, Data
Have you ever seen or been bitten by a midge (a cousin of the black fly)? How would you know? When midges were first discovered, two biologists working in Brazil did some important work to help identify the different types of these tiny biting insects. Check out this data set to see if midges really do have distinguishing features.
All terms: Animals, Life Science, Data
Look at changes in nominal oil prices vs. inflated oil prices from 1946 to 2009. Practice making scatterplots and interpreting relationships between variables. Available in Numbers and Excel formats.
All terms: 6-8, Correlations, 9+, Time Series, Data, Other
How long do you have to wait before Old Faithful goes off again?
All terms: Lithosphere, Earth Science, Data
How does air temperature compare to surface water temperature in Penobscot Bay? How can you use a graph to visualize the differences? This file includes data from several days during a week in mid-October, 2012.
All terms: Hydrosphere, Earth Science, Data
What is the relative abundance of the elements in the earth's oceans? What about in humans?
All terms: Chemistry, Physical Science, Data
How big are the planets and how far away are they from the earth?
All terms: Astronomy, Physical Science, Data
How do populations of snowshoe hare and lynx change over time? Use this dataset to understand this predator-prey relationship.
All terms: Animals, Life Science, Data
Includes national and selected state polling data for the presidential election from January to September 2012.
All terms: Data, Social Science
Does talking on a cell phone while driving really slow down your reaction time? A group of students tested that question – here is their data.
All terms: Life Science, Comparing Groups, Humans, Data
Data for 2009 showing percentage of state population that smokes. Also percentages by gender. Use to describe variation and look at measures of center, spread, outliers. Available in Numbers and Excel formats.
All terms: 6-8, Life Science, Describing Variability, 9+, Data, Other
Have you ever heard of sunspots? You will want to read through the metadata in this file carefully before drawing any conclusions about how sunspot number and the number of sunspots have varied over the last half-century.
All terms: Astronomy, Physical Science, Data
This data set is full of information about different elements and their properties.
All terms: Chemistry, Physical Science, Data
Do you think that ocean tides are influenced by the phases of the moon? Maybe after you look at this dataset you will want to take a trip to the beach when there is a full moon in the sky to see for yourself!
All terms: Hydrosphere, Earth Science, Data
Dataset with costs, fatalities and dates of US wars starting in 1775.
All terms: 6-8, Describing Variability, History, Correlations, 9+, Data, Social Science
This dataset shows weekly gas prices in different regions of the US dating back to 1990.
All terms: Energy, Physical Science, Data
These two files (available only in Excel at this time) provide volcano data in different formats. The "Volcano Data" file provides comprehensive information about volcanoes around the world, including a worksheet explaining the VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) rating system and a worksheet with suggested activities/questions. The second file contains one data subset with questions about the relationship between VEI and fatalities. These exercises are appropriate for Level 2--data sets are larger, may have extra variables or groups, guidance can be more open-ended.
All terms: 6-8, Correlations, 9+, Earth Science, Data
Where do some of the largest volcanoes occur? Is a volcano’s explosivity rating (VEI index) related to the size of the mountain? Are some types of volcanoes more explosive than others?
All terms: Lithosphere, Earth Science, Data
