Abstract
We have developed an exercise for the geoscience classroom that uses the LAVA lamp as an analogy to introduce general education undergraduate students to oceanography. The exercise provides a link between previously learned (from their secondary educational experience) and new knowledge by placing basic principles of science within an oceanographic context. Previously learned concepts that are built upon in the exercise address the properties of matter, the transformation of energy, force and motion, and the global processes that shape the Earth. The exercise requires students to compile an extensive list of observations using the lava lamp, to derive meaning from these observations and share this meaning with their peers, and to apply this meaning to new course content. Some of the more common observations recorded by students deal with changes of state in matter, differences in density among the lamp's components, the influence of temperature on density and thus on buoyancy, the formation of convection cells, and thermal expansion of fluid volume. We have found the exercise to be a useful way of introducing lower-division students to such related processes as adiabatic atmospheric circulation, global warming and sea level rise, and most especially magma movement contributing to global plate tectonics.