Digital Textbook
Clear chapters with diagrams, labs and Reference Tables connections. Free for every classroom.
Foundations
4 chapters
Observations and Measurement
Every idea in this book rests on the same three things. You need careful observation, honest measurement, and a clear sense of the difference between what you saw and what you concluded from it. This chapter builds those skills, from density to reading graphs, and the Regents uses them everywhere.
Visualizing QuantitiesRead chapterLocating Points on Earth
Earth science runs on maps, and maps need two skills. You have to locate a point exactly, and you have to read a field of values at a glance. This chapter builds both, from latitude and longitude to the isoline rules used on every map in the course.
Sun's PathRead chapterTopographic Maps
The elevation of the land is a field like any other, and a topographic map is how we show it. This chapter teaches you to read one well. You will cover contours, streams, gradient, and the profile view, which are the mapping skills the Regents tests every single year.
TopoRead chapterHuman Impact and Sustainability
The last agent of change in this book is us. This chapter applies everything you have learned, systems, cycles, evidence, to the human impact on Earth, from the greenhouse effect to what sustainability actually means.
Read chapter
Geology
11 chapters
Earth's Interior
No one has ever seen it. The deepest hole humans have drilled reaches about 12 kilometers, one five-hundredth of the way down. Everything we know about the other 6,359 kilometers was worked out without going there, and most of it was delivered by earthquakes.
Earth's InteriorRead chapterPlate Boundaries
Nearly all of Earth's geologic drama, its earthquakes, volcanoes, trenches, and mountain ranges, happens along the edges where tectonic plates meet. There are only three kinds of edges, and everything depends on which way the plates are moving.
Tectonics · Continental DriftRead chapterEarthquakes
The ground shakes somewhere on Earth about every eleven seconds. Each event sends waves through the whole planet. Reading those waves tells us where the break happened, how big it was, and even what Earth is made of inside.
TectonicsRead chapterVolcanoes
Two things decide how a volcano erupts. One is how much silica is in the magma. The other is how much gas is trapped inside it. Together they decide whether you get a slow lava flow you could walk away from, or a blast that removes the top of a mountain.
TectonicsRead chapterMinerals
Every rock on Earth is made of minerals. There are only a few dozen worth knowing, and you can identify each one with simple tests using a fingernail, a penny, a piece of glass, and a ceramic tile.
SamplesRead chapterThe Three Rock Families
Every rock on Earth belongs to one of three families, and the family name tells you how the rock formed. It either cooled from molten rock, was assembled from pieces, or was changed by heat and pressure. Learn to read the texture and you can tell which one you are holding.
SamplesRead chapterThe Rock Cycle
The three rock families are not a ranking or a set order. They are stops on a loop with no beginning and no end, where any rock can turn into any other given enough heat, pressure, or time. This is the rock cycle, and it has been running for about four billion years.
SamplesRead chapterWeathering and Soil
Before a single grain of sand can be carried anywhere, the rock it came from has to be broken down. That breakdown, happening right where the rock sits, is weathering. It is the first step that turns solid bedrock into the loose sediment and soil the rest of this unit moves around.
SamplesRead chapterErosion and Deposition
Weathering makes the pieces. This chapter moves them. Erosion picks up weathered material and carries it away. Deposition drops it back down when the energy runs out. These processes carved the Finger Lakes, built Long Island, and are still rearranging every riverbank in New York.
Stream Table · Stream & Sediment Lab · Glaciers · Coastal Processes · Waterfall FormationRead chapterLandscapes
Weathering and erosion do the work. A landscape is the result you can stand in and look at. The shape of the land, including its hills, valleys, and flats, tells you about the rock beneath it. New York has mountains, plateaus, and plains all in one state.
Topo · Stream Table · Glaciers · Coastal Processes · Waterfall FormationRead chapterGeologic History
Rocks keep a record of Earth's past. In this chapter you will put events in order using the layers themselves, match up rocks from different places using fossils, and use radioactive decay to put real numbers on an Earth that is 4.6 billion years old.
Geologic History · Continental DriftRead chapter
Meteorology
4 chapters
The Atmosphere and Moisture
Weather starts with two things, energy and moisture. This chapter covers the layers of the atmosphere that hold them, the three ways heat moves through it, and the dew point rules that decide when invisible water vapor turns into cloud.
Weather Station ModelsRead chapterPressure, Wind, and Air Masses
Air has weight, and the differences in that weight run the weather. This chapter follows the chain from pressure to wind to the great labeled air masses whose collisions set up every storm in the next chapter.
Weather Station Models · Weather Map CanvasRead chapterFronts, Station Models, and Storms
This chapter puts the whole unit to work. You will learn about fronts and the storms they bring, the large low-pressure systems that cross the country, and the station models and map symbols that let you read a weather map the way forecasters do.
Weather Fronts · Weather Station Models · Weather Map CanvasRead chapterClimate
Climate is the pattern of weather a place settles into over decades. A handful of factors set that pattern. They are latitude, water, currents, elevation, and mountains. Once you know them you can explain almost any climate on Earth.
Reason for the SeasonsRead chapter
Astronomy
4 chapters
Earth's Motions and Seasons
Step outside and the sky seems built to be figured out. This chapter covers Earth's two great motions, the evidence for them, and the tilted-axis machinery behind the seasons, ending with the sun's changing path over New York.
Reason for the Seasons · Sun's PathRead chapterThe Moon
Our nearest neighbor runs the sky's most reliable clocks. This chapter follows the moon through its 29.5-day cycle of phases, the rare perfect alignments that make eclipses, and the twice-daily rise and fall of the tides.
Scale · EclipsesRead chapterGravity, Orbits, and the Solar System
Why does everything orbit, and why do orbits have the shape they do? This chapter covers gravity and inertia, the two things that together make an orbit, the ellipses that all orbits follow, and the planets, comets, and debris that follow them.
Scale · Reason for the SeasonsRead chapterStars and the Universe
Everything we know about stars arrives as light. So this chapter starts with how to read that light. You will learn about spectra and the Doppler shift, and what they tell us about how stars live and die and how the universe is expanding.
ScaleRead chapter
Tools
Reference Tables
Every chart, map and table from the Earth and Space Sciences Reference Tables, with zoom, print and download, plus a skills guide for reading each page.
OpenRegents review
Build a practice set from the full question bank, pick your units, and see your score by topic with an explanation after every answer.
OpenUnit review sheets
A dense one-page review for each unit. Pick the units you want and print a clean custom study packet.
OpenRegents exam prep
How the exam is built, the released sample clusters mapped to the chapters that teach them, and where to find real past exams.
OpenGlossary
Every key term from every chapter in plain language, searchable, with flashcards and a matching game.
OpenExplore Earth
An interactive world map of places where Earth science happens, with live earthquakes, weather and day and night layers.
OpenImage gallery
Search public domain science images from NASA, the Smithsonian and more, right inside the book.
OpenTeacher companion
Which interactive to project for each unit, plus the misconceptions worth heading off before they take root.
Open