journey to the center of the earth vocabulary

Journey to the Center of the Earth

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Journey to the Center of the Earth: Introduction

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Historical Context of Journey to the Center of the Earth

Other books related to journey to the center of the earth.

• Full Title: Journey to the Center of the Earth
• When Written: Early 1860s
• Where Written: France
• When Published: 1864
• Literary Period: Romanticism, Realism
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Setting: 1863 in Germany, Iceland, and a series of subterranean tunnels
• Climax: Axel, Lidenbrock, and Hans create an abyss with a violent explosion that sends their raft into a waterspout.
• Antagonist: The dangers of nature
• Point of View: First Person

Extra Credit for Journey to the Center of the Earth

Lost in Translation. The first English translation of Journey to the Center of the Earth , published in 1871, was in fact not a translation but a complete rewriting of the novel. Character names were changed, chapters were given titles, and entire portions of the story were added or removed.

Journey to the Center of the Earth Unit Study

Hi everyone! I have another fun Literature Unit Study and Lapbook for you today. This one is on the classic Journey to the Center of the Earth . Hope you enjoy!

Story Summary:

The Journey to the Center of the Earth is a fictional story about a young man and his uncle who are launched on an action-packed adventure deep into the center of the Earth. What will they they discover in the unknown depths and will they make it back? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

This accompanying unit study is meant to be used with the Journey to the Center of the Earth Classic Starts version as retold from the Jules Verne original. The Classic Start versions are find them a little easier for younger readers, but you could certainly use this unit study with the original version if you have an older student. The lapbook chapters will correlate with the Classic Starts edition, but the concepts are the same, so you should be able to complete the units using any version you choose.

What ages are these units for?

I normally recommend my literature units for elementary level readers grades 1-5. You can assign them out individually to your student so they read on their own, then complete the mini-book assignment for each chapter. There are writing assignments for each chapter as your students answer comprehension questions from the reading. So you’ll just want to make sure they’re comfortable writing.

Or you can read it together as a group if you have younger readers, then have them complete the mini-book assignments when you’re done with each chapter.

How long does the literature unit take?

That really depends on your child’s reading speed, and how many chapters there are in the book! And how fast your child reads through the chapters as well.

Each one varies in length, and you can easily modify these units to fit your schedule. So for example, you can assign one chapter per day plus the associated mini-book assignments, or you can have them do 2-3/week. It’s totally up to you, your schedule, and your student.

What’s included in the Unit Study?

Each unit includes everything you need to complete the literature unit and lapbook with the exception of the book itself and a couple of regular file folders .

The download includes a teacher’s manual with the daily reading assignments, along with the comprehension questions and answers for each chapter. This makes it much easier for you to help your students even if you haven’t read the book yourself!

There is also one mini-book for each chapter in the book. Inside your student will answer a comprehension question that relates directly to the chapter they’ve just read. Some assignments include vocabulary words, comprehension questions, and completing the various reports included in the curriculum.

For older students:

This unit includes 5 reports that your students can complete. If you have older readers, have them do these reports to make the unit a bit more challenging. If you have younger readers, you might prefer to ask the questions verbally so they aren’t having to write a report.

The reports include:

• Story Facts (Setting, Main Plot, Main Characters)
• Protagonist vs. Antagonist
• Prediction Sheet
• My Book Report
• Book vs. Movie
• Storyboard timeline

As you read through the book, each chapter has a mini-book with comprehension questions for your student to complete.

This unit has 20 mini-books plus a vocabulary mini-book full of terms to learn throughout the reading.

Then on the backside of the lapbook, I added a pocket  where you can store the reports and story timelines just to keep everything together.

Get your copy today and start learning with classic literature! 

Looking for more unit studies? Check out these links!

• My Literature Lapbooks
• My Science & Inventor Lapbooks
• Famous Artists Lapbook & Unit Study
• Famous Composers Lapbook & Unit Study

How did I make this lapbook? Check out the video tutorials below!

• Tri-Fold Lapbook Tutorial
• How To Lapbook Tutorials

Of course you know I love to give back to my readers, so I’m offering 1 of these units free for one of you! Enter below!

**If you don’t want to wait, purchase it now, AND enter the giveaway. If you win, I’ll refund your purchase!

Hi Erica, I bought this lap book recently and we are just finishing it today. I thought I’d mention that my kids pointed out that you have the same title for chapters 19 and 20 and they think chapter 19 should read Eruption. Cheers, Lisa

Hello, I purchased your Lapbook and used it last year but couldn’t find my questions. This year I purchased another and the questions are different. Can you help? Coreen

Hi Coreen, I’ll send you an email so we can clarify 🙂

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

• Before Reading the Novel
• While Reading the Novel
• After Reading the Novel
• Extended Learning
• Bibliography
• About the Guide Authors
• About the Guide Editors
• Buy this Book!

Enter promo code TEACH for 15% off.

INTRODUCTION

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne is a novel that literally plunges the reader into the center of the earth through vivid descriptions, detailed explanations, and the "eyewitness" accounts of the narrator. On the most basic level, Journey is an adventure story – a tale of the obstacles, encounters, and wonders. The eccentric scientist Professor Hardwigg finds directions to the center of the earth in an old book and sets out, along with his nephew Henry and the guide Hans, to Iceland where they find the mountain and the shaft that allows them access to the depths of the earth. On a deeper level the story can be seen as man's journey into himself, always probing deeper for what lies at his center.

Written in 1864, this novel is a remarkable look into the future. Although students will recognize scientific predictions that were based on inaccurate assumptions, language that is somewhat antiquated, and a beginning that proceeds at a leisurely pace, they will appreciate Verne's ability to weave into the story information and questions about science that will keep them in a state of curiosity and wonderment. Since the novel moves at a slower pace than action-packed thrillers like Star Wars on which today's students have been raised, a good strategy to keep students involved in the novel is to provide them with many opportunities to predict what will happen and to encourage them to look for clues about what is to come. Students will gradually begin to understand how far ahead of his time Verne was in comprehending science and in basing his writings on some sense of the possible. They will see why he is considered by many to be the father of science fiction.

Verne extrapolated his adventures and inventions from scientific fact and what was known in the world at the time. Verne's emphasis on then current scientific knowledge makes his work unique. Laying a carefully documented scientific foundation for his fantastic adventure stories, he forecast with remarkable accuracy many scientific achievements of the 20th century. He anticipated flights into outer space, submarines, helicopters, air conditioning, guided missiles, and motion pictures long before they were developed. This teacher's guide encourages student participation through activities that encourage students to interact with the novel and think about the science involved in the novel.

Students who are mature, avid readers and like to be challenged with new information and ideas are the ideal audience for this novel. Introducing them to exciting minds such as Verne's gives them a new perspective on today's advances in writing and science, helping them understand that contemporary society did not invent information and imagination. Additionally, students learn that even prior to the age of computers humans possessed depth and breadth of knowledge. Verne was curious, fascinated by the world, and always wanted to know more. He shared what he learned with others through the medium of the novel. His other goal, to entertain his readers, was met through the construction of plotlines that continuously move readers through the work and the adventure. Journey to the Center of the Earth is not only a model of well crafted writing but a prototype of the kind of adventure stories that are so popular today in movies and in books.

A focus of this teacher's guide is to place students in the exciting role of explorers, with you acting as supporter and guide. Its goal is to help establish an interactive classroom in which students share written responses in small groups and then with the whole class, emphasizing discovery and involvement. When students raise questions about the time period, the background of the author, the unusual vocabulary and concepts, you can share information or encourage students to locate it themselves through such resources as the Internet. Sharing information with students as they raise questions is more effective than overwhelming them with information out of context. Stopping for short research sessions can whet their reading appetite.

Likewise, when students debate issues and opinions they are encouraged to return to the text to support their assertions. Although this guide has an abundance of activities and questions, the intent is to support you and your students' choices. It is not important or even desirable to have students respond to every chapter. More realistically, you might ask students to respond to one suggestion for every four or five chapters read. Students can share their work in small groups, raising the interest of other students. It is important to vary the activities and keep the work interesting by letting students use their imaginations as they demonstrate their involvement in the book.

The guide is divided into three sections. The first section provides background information to assist in answering questions. The Overview contains a brief biographical sketch of Jules Verne and a list of background information on what was happening in the world of science in the middle of the nineteenth century. The second or teaching section of the guide contains activities arranged for use either before, during, or after reading the novel. The third section provides ideas for extending the students' learning beyond the novel.

Some Notes on the Novel

The structure of this novel is simple, developed mainly through a single linear plotline told in retrospect. Students will find it easy to follow what is happening. Also, the relationships among the three main characters are easy to understand since they are seen close-up with no other characters to complicate the focus. The relationship between Harry (Henry) and Professor Hardwigg changes and grows in this plot-dominant novel, allowing examination of characterization of subtleties. The Afterword in the Signet Classic edition suggests an interesting approach to analyzing Verne's characters as representations of the mind, the body, and the soul.

What does take reader energy, of course, is the stunning array of scientific information. Many questions are raised creating an urge to run to an encyclopedia or the Internet to learn about more fascinating information or check its accuracy. Journey to the Center to the Earth makes the reader want to know and understand more. This was part of Verne's purpose; he viewed the novel as equal parts entertainment and instruction.

Historical Commentary

In the mid-19th century, during Verne's lifetime, exploration to unknown lands was in vogue. During this period, the interior of Africa, the geographical and magnetic poles, and much of Central and South America were little known by Europeans. Well known explorers such as Sir Richard Burton and Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingston were exploring above the earth's surface as their fictional counterparts Professor Hardwigg and Harry were exploring below.

Also, Charles Darwin was gaining attention for his theory of evolution; this is touched on by Verne in this novel. New frontiers were opening while "new ideas about the planet's core, prehistoric man, dinosaurs, and early life on earth battled religious intolerance and Barnum-like hoaxes" (Afterword 292). The Afterword of this Signet Classic edition explains that Verne "was able to adapt nearly every important element in the story's action from contemporary, intellectual, literary, scientific, and geographical thought" (291). The world during Verne's lifetime was a ferment of new ideas and was exploding with new knowledge. Verne captures that spirit in Journey to the Center of the Earth .

Verne's Life

Jules Verne was born in 1828 in France and died in 1905, spending the majority of his life writing over eighty books. He was born to a father who was a lawyer and to a mother who came from a family of ship builders and sea captains. The oldest of five children, Jules was trained in law but was more interested in writing opera librettos and plays, much to the chagrin of his father. After his first book was published in 1863, he devoted his life to writing, although geography and travel remained dominant interests.

Verne had no formal training in science. His passion was geography; everything else he learned from his reading, which included about fifteen newspapers a day. He took voluminous notes giving him a good sense of the emerging knowledge in many fields. He was very modest about his ability to predict inventions, saying he only extended what was already happening at the time.

Summary of the Novel

After decoding a scrap of paper he found in an old book, Professor Hardwigg decides to undertake the Journey to the Center of the Earth that the paper says is possible. Brushing aside the concerns of his nephew Harry about the temperature of the earth's interior, the Professor insists that Harry accompany him on the journey. Gathering needed supplies, the pair depart two days later for Mt. Sneffels in Iceland, the point through which they can gain access to the core of the earth.

With the Icelander Hans as their guide, the party undertakes the rugged journey up to the mountain, stopping to rest along the way at the homes of Icelanders. Through these contacts they learn much about Icelandic culture. Once they reach the mountain, the three descend into the crater and after several days determine which of three shafts is the one through which they can make their descent. Aided by Hans' s knowledge of how to use ropes they travel downward more than a mile the first day. The Professor explains that they are now at sea level and the real journey is just beginning.

At the bottom of the shaft, they come upon four crossed paths that they can follow and the Professor quickly chooses one. After several days trekking and almost out of water, they must retrace their steps because the path dead ends. Finally returning to the place of the four crossed paths, Harry collapses and assumes they will return to the surface. Although the Professor shows concern for Harry, he asks for one more day to find water before they abandon the journey. They select a different route and soon discover water.

Days later they find a well-like shaft through which they descend to twenty-one miles below the surface of the earth. Continuing to descend rapidly, Harry goes ahead of the others and soon finds himself alone. In desperation he retraces his steps but becomes hopelessly lost. It is only after much suffering four days later that Harry is reunited with his uncle Hans.

As Harry is recovering, he hears the sound of waves and thinks he sees light. In fact, the three have arrived at what they name the Central Sea, a vast underground body of water. At this point in the novel (Chapter 27) scientific wonders appear regularly. Exploring the area around the sea, the travelers find what looks like a forest but is actually forty foot mushrooms. The Professor explains to the astounded Harry how it is possible for plants to live beneath the earth. They continue their exploration of the area, finding bones of mastodons and other evidence of plant and animal life.

The Professor decides that they must cross the ocean to continue their descent even further into the earth. Lashing together wood mineralized by the sea to create a raft, the clever Hans rigs up a rudder. Once underway they are surprised by how quickly the raft moves. Harry has been given the job of keeping a good record of his observations. He drops a hook and soon a fish is caught, an ancient species long extinct in the world above. Harry daydreams about huge animals and plants, visualizing the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants.

The Professor becomes impatient because the sea is so much larger than he expected, and they are no longer descending. Trying to learn the depth of the sea, the Professor attaches a crowbar to a cord and throws it overboard. The cord runs out at two hundred fathoms, and the retrieved crowbar bears marks that look like teeth bites. Days later two huge monsters surface, battle, and almost swamp the raft. Continuing on, the three spot what they think is another giant monster but discover it is an island with a boiling water geyser. Harry suggests that there must be an internal heat source, but the Professor refuses to hear anything that refutes his own theory.

The next morning a storm strikes with fury and rages on for several days. The explorers tie themselves and their gear to the raft to avoid being tossed into the sea. A fire ball jumps onto the raft, destroys the mast and sail, and threatens them with its electric power.

The raft is eventually cast up on a rocky shore in the midst of the storm and Hans carries Harry to safety. As the storm dies down they find to their dismay that they have been carried back to the same shores from which they left. The Professor is enraged and insists on repeating the sea part of their journey. Exploring this area which is farther along the coast than their starting point, the Professor and Harry find enormous shells as long as fifteen feet and encounter a huge field of bones. Harry thinks the bones might contain the whole history of animal life. The Professor is delighted when they find a human skull. Harry shares his understanding of the importance of his uncle's find by describing what was happening in the world of paleontology or the science of fossil life. He discusses the views in Europe at that time that man's origins were even more ancient than than been previously believed. Then the two find more and more skeletons and wonder if these humans always lived beneath the earth or had ever lived on it.

Continuing their explorations they come across a beautiful forest of ferns and pines lacking color. They spot gigantic animals such as elephants and in the distance see a twelve-foot tall human being. Afraid of confrontation, they leave the area with many questions about man's origins. As they retrace their steps to the beach and the raft, Harry spots a rusted dagger which the Professor believes is from the sixteenth-century. He thinks it was probably used to carve an inscription on the rocks, and they find the initials A. S. carved beside the entrance to a dark and gloomy tunnel. With evidence that Arne Saknussemm has traveled this way, they enter the passage only to discover that it is blocked by solid granite.

The three decide to blast their way into the tunnel. They set the charge and retreat to the raft. The explosion opens a chasm that appears to be swallowing the Central Sea. They are thrown down on the raft and swept along with the rushing waters. Harry estimates their speed to be at least one hundred miles an hour as they are drawn deeper into the blackness of the center of the earth. Their fall is stopped by what appears to be a water spout.

As Harry half dreams, he thinks the raft has landed and he is in a small cave. A crocodile-shark monster and a huge ape come towards him, stop when they see each other, and engage in fierce battle. As the survivor comes towards Harry, he wakes and realizes he is still on the raft but that it is now ascending as the waters are pushed up a narrow shaft. Harry is consumed by hunger but the rising temperature in the shaft becomes his main concern, and the party soon discover that the liquid beneath the raft is boiling hot. The Professor explains that an eruption is about to take place, and they are on top of the lava flow hurtling towards the earth's surface.

Harry awakes to find Hans supporting him on a mountainside. While making their way down, they learn from a young shepherd that they are on the island of Stromboli in Italy.

Once back in Germany, the three are treated like heroes and the Professor's achievements are recognized.

Although the plot of this novel is linear and easy to understand and the language only occasionally challenging, getting into the novel may be difficult for some students. The pace of the plot is slower than plots of contemporary science fiction novels and movies.

Read the first several chapters aloud to assist students in familiarizing themselves with Verne's style, language, and pace. Mature readers then should be able to read the novel with no trouble. In order to get students involved in and thinking about the issues, the plot, and the setting of the novel, select several of the following activities or questions for student oral, written or artistic response.

1. If you could be an expert on anything in the world, what would it be? To what lengths would you go to gather information?

2. If someone told you they would take you miles down into the earth, how would you react? What would be your biggest concerns?

3. Some of the earlier parts of the novel take place in Iceland. What do you know about Iceland? What are your impressions of the country?

4. What do you know about the center of the earth? What theories have you heard about the composition of the earth's core?

5. When you think of the center of the earth what images, colors, and scenes do you see? What would you expect it to look like? Draw a picture or create a model of your image of the center of the earth.

6. If you were going on a journey or an adventure, what would you have to do to get ready? How would you know what to take?

7. What would be too scary for you to do - what is your limit? Would you be willing to go up in space; beneath the ocean?

8. What were your greatest childhood fears? Did they have to do with the dark, with heights, with speed, with going downhill rapidly, with monsters or very large beasts, with being caught in a natural phenomenon such as a tornado? Share your fears and tally the class's fears to see what most people consider scary.

9. Create the most fearful scenario you can, based on the class's tally of fears. Illustrate it, and then share it with your classmates. As you read Journey to the Center of the Earth , compare your ideas of what is scary to what Harry experiences.

10. If your parents or some one else whom you trust and love wanted you to go on a hazardous journey, how would you react? Compare your reactions to Harry's as you read the novel.

11. What do you know about the plant and animal history of the world? In groups piece together what you know about the earth's early evolution and the eventual extinction of some animals and plants.

12. In groups, create a collage from magazines showing what you imagine the center of the earth to be like. Use words as well as pictures.

13. How is a journey different from a trip? What journeys have you taken? Think of a journey as not merely physical, but also as a life-changing experience, accomplishment, or series of events. Or, perhaps your journey is in your imagination. Tell the story of your journey to the class or a small group.

14. In what ways might it be valuable for us to know more about what the inside of the earth is like?

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Journey to the Center of the Earth Lesson Plan

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Journey to the Center of the Earth Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Journey to the Center of the Earth is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

trevor and his brother researched the possiblity of volcanic tubes passing thorugh what layer of the earth

Volcanic tubes going toward the center of the Earth.

Trevor and his brother researched the possibility of volcanic tubes passing through what layer of the Earth?

Is this a question or a statement?

What were the objections that Axel raised against the document of Arne Saknusemm? How did his uncle reply?

• Axel tried to convince his uncle that the document was likely a forgery or joke.

• Axel argued that no tunnel would be able reach the center of the earth without being crushed.

Please post your questions separately.

Study Guide for Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth study guide contains a biography of Jules Verne, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Journey to the Center of the Earth
• Journey to the Center of the Earth Summary
• Character List

Lesson Plan for Journey to the Center of the Earth

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Journey to the Center of the Earth
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Journey to the Center of the Earth Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Journey to the Center of the Earth

• Introduction
• Main characters
• Publication notes
• Adaptations

Page Numbers by Book Edition

A journey to the center of the earth — vocabulary.

NASA-IBM Collaboration Develops INDUS Large Language Models for Advanced Science Research

By Derek Koehl

Collaborations with private, non-federal partners through Space Act Agreements are a key component in the work done by NASA's Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT). A collaboration with International Business Machines (IBM) has produced INDUS, a comprehensive suite of large language models (LLMs) tailored for the domains of Earth science, biological and physical sciences, heliophysics, planetary sciences, and astrophysics and trained using curated scientific corpora drawn from diverse data sources.

INDUS contains two types of models; encoders and sentence transformers. Encoders convert natural language text into numeric coding that can be processed by the LLM. The INDUS encoders were trained on a corpus of 60 billion tokens encompassing astrophysics, planetary science, Earth science, heliophysics, biological, and physical sciences data. Its custom tokenizer developed by the IMPACT-IBM collaborative team improves on generic tokenizers by recognizing scientific terms like biomarkers and phosphorylated . Over half of the 50,000-word vocabulary contained in INDUS is unique to the specific scientific domains used for its training. The INDUS encoder models were used to fine tune the sentence transformer models on approximately 268 million text pairs, including titles/abstracts and questions/answers.

By providing INDUS with domain-specific vocabulary, the IMPACT-IBM team achieved superior performance over open, non-domain specific LLMs on a benchmark for biomedical tasks, a scientific question-answering benchmark, and Earth science entity recognition tests. By designing for diverse linguistic tasks and retrieval augmented generation , INDUS is able to process researcher questions, retrieve relevant documents, and generate answers to the questions. For latency sensitive applications, the team developed smaller, faster versions of both the encoder and sentence transformer models.

Validation tests demonstrate that INDUS excels in retrieving relevant passages from the science corpora in response to a NASA-curated test set of about 400 questions. IBM researcher Bishwaranjan Bhattacharjee commented on the overall approach: “We achieved superior performance by not only having a custom vocabulary but also a large specialized corpus for training the encoder model and a good training strategy. For the smaller, faster versions, we used neural architecture search to obtain a model architecture and knowledge distillation to train it with supervision of the larger model.”

INDUS was also evaluated using data from NASA's Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) Division. Dr. Sylvain Costes, the NASA BPS project manager for Open Science, discussed the benefits of incorporating INDUS: “Integrating INDUS with the Open Science Data Repository  ( OSDR ) Application Programming Interface (API) enabled us to develop and trial a chatbot that offers more intuitive search capabilities for navigating individual datasets. We are currently exploring ways to improve OSDR's internal curation data system by leveraging INDUS to enhance our curation team's productivity and reduce the manual effort required daily.”

At the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES-DISC), the INDUS model was fine-tuned using labeled data from domain experts to categorize publications specifically citing GES-DISC data into applied research areas. According to NASA principal data scientist Dr. Armin Mehrabian, this fine-tuning “significantly improves the identification and retrieval of publications that reference GES-DISC datasets, which aims to improve the user journey in finding their required datasets.” Furthermore, the INDUS encoder models are integrated into the GES-DISC knowledge graph, supporting a variety of other projects, including the dataset recommendation system and GES-DISC GraphRAG.

Kaylin Bugbee, team lead of NASA’s Science Discovery Engine (SDE), spoke to the benefit INDUS offers to existing applications: "Large language models are rapidly changing the search experience. The Science Discovery Engine, a unified, insightful search interface for all of NASA's open science data and information, has prototyped integrating INDUS into its search engine. Initial results have shown that INDUS improved the accuracy and relevancy of the returned results."

INDUS enhances scientific research by providing researchers with improved access to vast amounts of specialized knowledge. INDUS can understand complex scientific concepts and reveal new research directions based on existing data. It also enables researchers to extract relevant information from a wide array of sources, improving efficiency. Aligned with NASA and IBM’s commitment to open and transparent artificial intelligence, the INDUS models are openly available on Hugging Face . For the benefit of the scientific community, the team has released the developed models and will release the benchmark datasets that span named entity recognition for climate change, extractive QA for Earth science, and information retrieval for multiple domains. The INDUS encoder model s are adaptable for science domain applications, and the INDUS retriever model s support information retrieval in RAG applications.

A paper on INDUS, “INDUS: Effective and Efficient Language Models for Scientific Applications,” is available on arxiv.org.

Learn more about the Science Discovery Engine here .

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