Blue Marble
Earth and space science for grades 6 to 12

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Today's factJupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm wider than the whole Earth.

New assignmentYour assignments
Free for grades 6 to 12

Earth and space science your class can touch.

Interactive simulations with questions built in. Students join with a class code and a first name. You see every answer as it lands.

Explore the simulationsSet up a class

Earth from NASA Blue Marble imagery, turned to match the Apollo 17 photograph.

Got a class code?

Six letters and numbers from your teacher. No account needed.

Simulations

Each one runs in a browser on any device, with nothing to install.

Try one yourself, then assign it to a class.

Sim

Moon phases

MS-ESS1-1

Fly around a real 3D Moon, then stand on Earth and look up. The phase is which part of the lit half faces you.

Open the simulation
Sim

Eclipses

MS-ESS1-1

Run the real Sun and Moon from 2000 to 2050. Most new and full moons miss: find the ones that line up, and see each shadow to scale.

Open the simulation
Game

The greenhouse effect

MS-ESS3-5 · HS-ESS2-4

You are a photon of sunlight. Aim at Earth, warm the ground, then try to get back out to space as infrared.

Open the game
Sim

Greenhouse planets

MS-ESS3-5 · HS-ESS2-4

Venus is almost twice as far from the Sun as Mercury. Which one is hotter? Change each planet's greenhouse gas and find out.

Open the simulation
Sim

Seasons

MS-ESS1-1

Fly Earth around the Sun, then stand anywhere on it. Seasons come from the tilt, not from how close we are to the Sun.

Open the simulation
Game

The carbon cycle

MS-LS2-3 · HS-LS2-5 · HS-ESS2-6

Be a carbon atom. Fly an island as carbon dioxide, slip into a leaf and become sugar, then choose: burned for energy, grown into wood, fallen and rotted, or eaten by a cow.

Open the game

How it runs in class

  1. 1 · Pick the questions

    Start from a middle school or high school set, or add questions of your own.

  2. 2 · Share the code

    Put it on the board or send the link. Students type a first name and they are in.

  3. 3 · Watch answers arrive

    See which wrong answer is winning. Export everything to a spreadsheet.

Set up a class

Free, with nothing attached.

No ads, no paid tier, no student accounts. The only thing stored about a student is a first name and their answers, and it deletes itself after a year. Read the privacy page.