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Grade 9 – Freshman Year

Earth Science

The planet you live on, studied from four directions: its rocks, its water, its air, and its place in space.
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About Course

Earth Science is the study of a single object — the planet you are standing on — from four directions at once: its rocks, its water, its air, and its place in space.

This course treats Earth as a set of connected systems rather than a list of facts. You will learn why mountains form where they do, why some volcanoes erupt gently and others catastrophically, how a rock records the conditions it formed in, and how scientists reconstruct a climate from ice that fell as snow 800,000 years ago.

What you will study

  • Unit 1 — Studying the Earth: scientific inquiry, Earth’s four spheres, maps and topography, and reading scientific data critically.
  • Unit 2 — Earth’s Materials: minerals and their properties, the three rock families, and the rock cycle.
  • Unit 3 — The Dynamic Earth: Earth’s interior, plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes.
  • Unit 4 — Surface Processes and Geologic Time: weathering, erosion, groundwater, and dating the rock record.
  • Unit 5 — The Atmosphere and Oceans: weather systems, climate and climate change, ocean currents and tides.
  • Unit 6 — Earth in Space and Human Impact: seasons and eclipses, the solar system, stars and the universe, and resources and sustainability.

How the course works

Most of your time is spent on teaching lessons with worked explanations and real examples. Each unit includes two interactive activities you complete on screen — typing answers directly into the worksheet, with nothing to print or upload — and one unit quiz marked automatically. A mid-course assessment follows Unit 3 and a final assessment closes the course.

What you will be able to do

By the end you will be able to explain the processes shaping the planet, read scientific data with confidence, and evaluate environmental claims on evidence rather than assertion.

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What Will You Learn?

  • Apply scientific inquiry to questions about the Earth
  • Identify minerals and rocks and read the history recorded in them
  • Explain plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes as one connected system
  • Interpret maps, graphs and scientific data with confidence
  • Evaluate environmental claims using evidence rather than assertion

Requirements

  • No prior science required. Basic arithmetic and graph reading are helpful.

Audience

  • Students taking their first laboratory science course, and anyone curious about the forces behind landscapes, weather, oceans and the night sky.

Course Content

Getting Started
<p>How this course works, what you will learn, and how you are assessed.</p>

  • Course Overview and Learning Objectives

Unit 1: Studying the Earth
<h2>Unit Introduction</h2> <p>Earth Science is the study of a single object — the planet you are standing on — from four directions at once: its rocks, its water, its air, and its place in space.</p> <p>Before any of that, you need the tools. This unit covers how scientists investigate a planet they cannot put in a laboratory, how the Earth's parts connect into systems, and how to read the maps and data that carry the evidence. Everything in the remaining five units depends on the habits built here.</p> <h2>Unit Learning Objectives</h2> <p>By the end of Unit 1 you will be able to: - Apply the steps of scientific inquiry to an Earth Science question - Describe Earth's four spheres and explain how they interact - Read topographic maps, contour lines and latitude/longitude - Interpret graphs and data tables, and distinguish observation from inference</p>

Unit 2: Earth’s Materials
<h2>Unit Introduction</h2> <p>Everything solid on this planet is made of minerals, and minerals assemble into rocks. Read a rock correctly and it tells you where it formed, under what conditions, and how long ago — which makes rocks the primary historical documents of Earth Science.</p> <p>This unit teaches you to read them.</p> <h2>Unit Learning Objectives</h2> <p>By the end of Unit 2 you will be able to: - Define a mineral and identify minerals using physical properties - Distinguish intrusive from extrusive igneous rocks - Describe how sedimentary and metamorphic rocks form - Explain the rock cycle as a set of processes rather than a fixed sequence</p>

Unit 3: The Dynamic Earth
<h2>Unit Introduction</h2> <p>For most of human history the continents were assumed to be fixed. They are not. They move at roughly the speed your fingernails grow — which, over a hundred million years, is enough to open an ocean.</p> <p><strong>Plate tectonics</strong> is the single theory that explains earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain ranges, ocean trenches and the distribution of fossils across continents that are now separated by water. It is the closest thing Earth Science has to a unifying framework.</p> <h2>Unit Learning Objectives</h2> <p>By the end of Unit 3 you will be able to: - Describe Earth's internal layers by composition and by physical behaviour - Explain the evidence for continental drift and sea-floor spreading - Identify the three plate boundary types and their characteristic features - Explain how earthquakes are measured and how volcanoes differ</p>

Unit 4: Surface Processes and Geologic Time
<h2>Unit Introduction</h2> <p>Unit 3 covered the forces that build land up. This unit covers the ones that wear it down — and the record those processes leave behind.</p> <p>Weathering and erosion are slow, unglamorous and relentless. Given enough time they are more than a match for mountain building, and "enough time" is something Earth has in extraordinary supply. This unit ends by confronting that timescale directly.</p> <h2>Unit Learning Objectives</h2> <p>By the end of Unit 4 you will be able to: - Distinguish mechanical from chemical weathering and explain what controls their rates - Describe how water, wind, ice and gravity erode, transport and deposit material - Explain how groundwater moves and why aquifers matter - Apply relative and absolute dating to interpret the rock record</p>

Unit 5: The Atmosphere and Oceans
<h2>Unit Introduction</h2> <p>Earth's atmosphere and oceans are a single connected engine, powered by the Sun and shaped by the planet's rotation. Together they move heat from the equator toward the poles, and that redistribution is what produces weather, climate and the conditions life depends on.</p> <p>This unit explains how that engine works, and what happens when its settings change.</p> <h2>Unit Learning Objectives</h2> <p>By the end of Unit 5 you will be able to: - Describe the layers and composition of the atmosphere - Explain air masses, fronts and how weather systems develop - Distinguish weather from climate and describe the evidence for climate change - Explain ocean currents, tides and the ocean's role in regulating temperature</p>

Unit 6: Earth in Space and Human Impact
<h2>Unit Introduction</h2> <p>The final unit widens the frame twice. First outward: Earth's motion produces days, seasons and eclipses; the solar system and the universe supply the context in which the planet exists.</p> <p>Then inward, to the most recent development in Earth's history — a species capable of altering the planet's systems faster than those systems normally change.</p> <h2>Unit Learning Objectives</h2> <p>By the end of Unit 6 you will be able to: - Explain day, year, seasons, moon phases and eclipses - Describe the structure of the solar system and how it formed - Describe stars, galaxies and the evidence for an expanding universe - Evaluate resource use, sustainability and human impact on Earth's systems</p>

Course Completion
<p>Final assessment and full-course review.</p>

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Rapid Grad Academy

Rapid Grad Academy

4.3
7 Students
25 Courses
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$75.00
  • Grade 9 – Freshman Year
  • 5
  • September 26, 2026
  • Certificate of completion

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