Teachers
KS3 · 15 minutes · no login
Earth’s energy budget
All teacher notes · Open the lab · 2111 words · ·
Why this lesson, and why the 3D
Earth’s energy budget is a fifteen-minute projector lesson, not a homework packet and not a film with a quiz bolted on. Put this hook on the board before you dim the lights: The ground, not the air, takes the Sun’s punch first. By the end of the slot a pupil should be able to trace incoming shortwave, albedo, longwave from the ground, and a simple greenhouse return. Curriculum tags in the header (KS3; GCSE climate; NGSS MS-ESS2-6; APES 4.4) are filters, not a flag. The room is worldwide; SI first; International English. Ages on the card (KS3, GCSE, NGSS MS, APES) are a suggested band, not a gate.
Urban heat and snowmelt are budget stories, not moods of the air. A snowy Cairngorm plateau and a paved Phoenix afternoon are the same arrows with different numbers: incoming shortwave, a bounce, absorption at the surface, then longwave up from the ground. The air is mostly heated from below. That is why a dark playground cooks and a bright snowfield does not, and why a UK winter park under fresh snow can stay stubbornly cold while a Florida car park does not. GCSE climate and APES energy-budget diagrams both start here. If pupils think the air takes the Sun’s punch first, every later sentence about greenhouse return, sea breezes, and urban heat islands sits on the wrong floor. Trace the yellow beam to the ground. Then talk about London brick, Arizona desert, and mountain snow as surfaces, not as weather personalities.
The 3D is a named, inspectable object. Click the part, not a caption. If the model will not spin, the Why panel still carries the mechanism, the two photographs, and the film. Do not apologise for the model. Drive it. A silent spin teaches a screensaver. A named mesh that changes under a slider teaches the process.
Fifteen minutes on the projector
Trace one yellow shortwave arrow to the ground. Some bounces. The ground then glows longwave. The air is mostly heated from below. That is the misconception in reverse. Snap Albedo toward snow. Less shortwave is absorbed. Ask what happens to the red glow. It should fade. Toggle Greenhouse return off, then on. Longwave from the atmosphere back to the ground — a school box, not a forecast. Greenhouse gases do not trap the Sun’s yellow light as a blanket over the beam. Albedo is a surface choice. Fresh snow high, dark peat low. Cairngorms versus Phoenix. This is not a climate prediction. Say so. Arizona desert and Cairngorm snow are the same arrows with different numbers. Finish in Check.
Open the lab full screen (F). Labels on (L). Speak the first step before you touch a slider: Watch the yellow shortwave hit the ground. Some bounces. The ground then glows longwave. Then the second: Raise albedo (snow). Less is absorbed. Toggle greenhouse return. Then the third: The air is mostly heated from below. Albedo is a surface choice. Greenhouse gases return longwave; they do not ‘trap the Sun’s yellow light’ as a blanket over the beam.
The sliders that earn their keep are Albedo; Greenhouse return. Space plays; arrows nudge time; R resets. Parameters the URL can remember: albedo, greenhouse. If you only have eight minutes, skip the last step and finish in Check. Projector layout (P) is for the back row: one idea, large type, the model still live.
Drag to orbit the globe of arrows. Space plays and pauses the beam. Arrows left and right nudge time. L hides labels so you can ask what yellow and red mean. R resets albedo and the greenhouse toggle. P is projector. Scrub Albedo from peat toward snow and watch absorbed shortwave fall. Toggle Greenhouse return off, then on. Time is not a year clock here; the drive is the slider and the toggle. Share the URL when the snow and the return sit where you want the question.
The in-site film is “What Does the Atmosphere Do? Crash Course Geography #6” (Crash Course Geography, about 11 min, Crash Course / Complexly on YouTube. Standard YouTube licence. Educational embed, autoplay off.). Autoplay is off. Play one minute if you need a second voice; do not let the film eat the slot. The 3D still has to move under your hand.
What the third row will get wrong
You will hear the misconception before you have finished the first sentence. Write the false claim on the board and leave it there until the model has contradicted it. Do not skip this. A fluent pupil can recite the hook and still believe the false sentence.
“The air takes the Sun’s heat, then warms the ground.” — no. The ground (and ocean) take most of the beam. The air is heated from below, plus some absorption.
“Greenhouse gases trap the Sun’s yellow light as a blanket over the beam.” — no. The solar beam is shortwave. Greenhouse return is longwave from the atmosphere back to the ground.
“Albedo is how hot a surface feels to the hand.” — no. Albedo is the reflected fraction of shortwave. A dark dry pavement can run hot because it absorbs more, then emits longwave.
Pitfalls to keep in your pocket: Calling this a climate prediction. ‘The atmosphere is a blanket that blocks sunlight.’ Inventing watt-per-square-metre inventories the lab does not show. Teaching albedo as a feeling of warmth rather than a reflected fraction. Do not let a pupil leave thinking the 3D is a photograph. It is a teaching model. Where vertical exaggeration exists, T collapses it and the caption says so. A labelled lie of scale is honest. An unlabelled one is a cartoon.
Two places, not a slogan
The solar beam is shortwave: ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared. Some of that beam reflects to space; that fraction is albedo. The rest is absorbed, mostly by ground and ocean, some by atmosphere and cloud. The warmed surface emits longwave infrared. Greenhouse gases absorb and re-radiate that longwave; the school box labelled greenhouse return is longwave from the atmosphere back to the ground, not a blanket that blocks the yellow beam on the way in, and not a 2026 climate forecast. Raise albedo toward snow and less shortwave is absorbed, so the red glow fades. Drop albedo toward dark peat or asphalt and the surface takes more of the punch. Phoenix heat is a low-albedo, dry, urban-surface story. Cairngorm snow is a high-albedo story until melt changes the cover. London brick and a Florida wetland sit between those poles, with water and evaporation arguing as well. Units in the adult literature are watts per square metre (W m⁻²); this lab is the arrow diagram, not an inventory you should invent numbers for. Toggle greenhouse return off to see the surface glow without the return, then on again so the class hears the honest sentence: school box, not a GCM.
The first place to land is Cairngorms snow albedo. The second is Arizona desert / Phoenix. Same process, different rock or climate. If a pupil can only name one place, they have a postcard, not a mechanism. Atlas entries for those names are a click from the case list; send them back to the lab with one sentence they can say in Check.
Do not flatten the comparison into “this country versus that country.” Name the landform. Holderness is till, not chalk. Hawaii is a hotspot, not an island arc. Yosemite is a glacial trough, not a river canyon. The 3D is allowed to be schematic; the place names are not allowed to be sloppy.
Figures and the film
Field photograph: Earth’s energy budget as a measured diagram. In must equal out, or the planet warms. Credit: NASA, public domain.
Mechanism photograph: Field or official figure for teaching Energy budget. A second photograph for the projector script — not the lab cover. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / NASA / USGS.
Two photographs, two jobs. The field picture is the place. The mechanism picture is the process. Do not run the lesson on a single Apollo Earth disc. A carbon-cycle class is a forest and a seam, not a blue marble. An ENSO class is a Pacific temperature map, not Africa from Apollo 17.
Words they must be able to say
Say these out loud once while you click the matching mesh. If a word has no mesh, it still has a photograph in Terms.
Albedo: Fraction of incoming shortwave reflected by a surface. Fresh snow high; dark peat low. Shortwave: Solar radiation: ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared. Longwave: Earth-emitted infrared from the ground, ocean, and atmosphere. Greenhouse effect: Atmosphere absorbing and re-radiating longwave. School box, not a GCM. Energy budget: Balance of incoming and outgoing radiation for a surface or the planet. Absorption: Radiation taken up by a surface or gas and converted to energy in that matter. Emission: Radiation given out. Warm ground emits longwave. Insolation: Incoming solar radiation at a surface, after geometry and, at the ground, atmosphere.
Exam-language toggle (the Teacher tab) swaps UK/US pairs where they exist — levée/levee, arête/arete — so a mixed room is not punished for spelling.
Close the slot
If JavaScript or WebGL dies, the 2D fallback still shows the budget as labelled arrows. Teach from the steps: yellow shortwave to the ground, bounce, red longwave, greenhouse return as a school box. Check still asks what hits first, what albedo is, why Cairngorm snow heats the air less than peat, and what the greenhouse toggle is not. Print the teacher script. The glossary still names albedo, shortwave, and longwave. Cases still point at Cairngorms and Phoenix. You lose the moving beams, not the floor the air is heated from. A board sketch of yellow in and red out can stand in for the canvas.
Finish in Check — ten questions, not a mood. The bank mixes definition, process, the misconception you just killed, a named place, and a read-the-model item (click the part; T). If a pupil can only recite the hook, they have not used the geometry. Wrong answers still show the one-line explain. Do not skip the explain.
Sources on the Teacher tab are the trail, not a bibliography to copy. NASA energy budget diagram; NOAA climate.
Link back to the live lab and keep the same slug. Do not invent a parallel worksheet that contradicts T, SI, or the named parts.
This note is worldwide. Curriculum tags (KS3; GCSE climate; NGSS MS-ESS2-6; APES 4.4) are filters, not a flag. A class in Nairobi, London, or Shanghai can use the same 3D. Ages (KS3, GCSE, NGSS MS, APES) are a suggested band. If a sentence only works in one exam board, rewrite it before you project it.
Write these three lines on the board before you dim the lights. One: The ground, not the air, takes the Sun’s punch first. Two: the misconception “The air takes the Sun’s heat, then warms the ground.”. Three: the named parts they must click. Then drive the model. Check is ten questions covering definition, process, the misconception, a place, and a read-the-model item. Do not skip the explain on a wrong answer.
Board, units, and what not to say
SI first. Metres, kilometres, degrees Celsius, metres per second. A conversion in brackets is courtesy, not a second system. Do not let a pupil leave thinking the 3D is a photograph. It is a teaching model. Where vertical exaggeration exists, T collapses it and the caption says so.
Do not say “teaching mesh”, “sprinkle”, or “thin free surface not a fat pipe” out loud. Say the landform. Seasons are ~23.44° of axial tilt, not Earth–Sun distance. The outer core is liquid; S-waves do not pass. Yosemite is a glacial U-trough. San Andreas is a transform. Hawaiʻi and Yellowstone are hotspots. Florida is not a glacial trough.
If the room is noisy, projector layout (P) is the back-row setting: one idea, large type, the model still live. Full screen (F). Labels (L). Space plays. Arrows nudge time. R resets. The URL can remember albedo, greenhouse. Send them home with the same link; there is no login.
Urban heat and snowmelt are budget stories, not moods of the air. A snowy Cairngorm plateau and a paved Phoenix afternoon are the same arrows with different numbers: incoming shortwave, a bounce, absorption at the surface, then longwave up from the ground. The air is mostly heated from below. That is why a dark playground cooks and a bright snowfield does not, and why a UK winter park under fresh snow can stay stubbornly cold while a Florida car park does not. GCSE climate and APES energy-budget diagrams both start here. If pupils think the air takes the Sun’s punch first, every later sentence about greenhouse return, sea breezes, and urban heat islands sits on the wrong floor. Trace the yellow beam to the ground. Then talk about London brick, Arizona desert, and mountain snow as surfaces, not as weather personalities.
In-site film
What Does the Atmosphere Do? Crash Course Geography #6. Crash Course Geography. Crash Course / Complexly on YouTube. Standard YouTube licence. Educational embed, autoplay off. Autoplay off.