Longitude

“Who gets to solve scientific problems—and who gets to decide which solutions count?”

Welcome to the Novel Science series—curriculum unit frameworks designed to bridge literature, rigorous scientific inquiry, and social and environmental justice.

Longitude: Earth Science, Physics & Scientific Justice is a comprehensive, nine-week high school Earth Science and physics framework that uses Dava Sobel’s acclaimed historical narrative to explore coordinate systems, rotational astronomy, mechanical oscillation, thermal expansion, maritime geography, and engineering design. 

Moving far beyond a simple story about clocks, this framework challenges students to examine how scientific knowledge develops, how academic gatekeeping marginalizes practical craft, how measurement error produces real-world human risk, and how navigation technologies historically intersected with global trade, empire, and modern transportation equity.

What Makes This a "Unit Framework"?

This resource is not a scripted, one-size-fits-all lesson plan binder. I trust educators as the experts in their classrooms and communities.

This framework delivers the architectural blueprint, mathematical progressions, and pacing for your unit—the essential questions, laboratory and modeling concepts, discussion circles, engineering design rubrics, standards alignments, and primary-source investigations. You retain the autonomy to adapt daily activities, readings, and investigations to reflect your students' lived realities and local environments.

What’s Inside the 9-Week Arc?

Each week pairs specific chapters of Longitude with targeted NGSS, CCSS-Math, and CCSS-ELA standards, inquiry questions, and lab investigations:

• Week 1: Imaginary Lines (Earth Coordinate Systems, Latitude vs. Longitude, Human GPS Activity, Coordinate Math & Precision)

• Week 2: The Sea Before Time (Dead Reckoning, 1707 Scilly Naval Disaster, Wave Dynamics & Vessel Stability Lab, Navigation Error Calculations)

• Week 3: Adrift in a Clockwork Universe (Rotational Astronomy, Celestial Navigation, Solar Time, Calculating Time-to-Distance 

• Week 4: Time in a Bottle (Pendulum Mechanics, Oscillation & Friction, Thermal Expansion of Metals, Variables Affecting Periodicity Lab)

• Week 5: The Prize (1714 Longitude Act, Institutional Gatekeeping, Precision vs. Accuracy, Student Cogmaker’s Engineering Journal)

• Week 6: The Grasshopper Goes to Sea (Marine Chronometers, Environmental Disturbance Testing, Ocean Currents & Weather, Error vs. Time Graphing)

• Week 7: The Diamond Timekeeper (Harrison's H4, Mechanical Balance Systems, Prototype Redesign Challenge, CER Engineering Validation)

• Week 8: A Tale of Two Portraits (Navigation, Imperial Expansion, Trans-Atlantic Trade Routes, Primary Sources & the Ethics of Technology)

• Week 9: The Mass Production of Genius (Standardization, Evolution from Chronometers to GPS, Local Transportation & Mobility Equity Audits)

Key Features Included:

• The Discussion Circle Progression: A weekly scaffolded sequence that moves students from spatial basics to institutional justice ("What does it mean to know where you are?"➡️ "Who bears the consequences when a navigation system fails?" ➡️ "Does formal education determine whether someone can be a scientist or engineer?" ➡️ "Can scientific progress have both benefits and harmful consequences?" ➡️"Who gets to move freely through a community?").

• The Student Cogmaker's Journal: A recurring engineering design tool where students systematically track design problems, constraints, failure points, and iterative revisions based on empirical test data.

• The Integrated Mathematics Thread: Progresses through quantitative analysis of coordinates, degree-to-time unit conversions, trigonometric relationships, percent error, rate of drift, and statistical distributions.

• Place-Based Community Mobility Fieldwork: Practical fieldwork protocols guiding students to map local physical infrastructure (sidewalks, bike lanes, crosswalks, transit frequency) to evaluate modern transportation and mobility equity.

• Culminating Performance Task (The Longitude Engineering & Navigation Challenge): Multi-option student projects spanning historical mechanical prototypes, modern GPS analyses, extreme-environment navigation design, or accessible transit solutions evaluated through a simulated review panel.

• Complete Multi-Disciplinary Standards Alignment: Threaded alignments for NGSS Physical Science (Forces, Motion, Energy, Waves), Earth & Space Science, and Engineering Design, alongside CCSS High School Mathematics and CCSS-ELA Grades 11–12 technical literacy standards.