Energy, Environment, and Health

Learning Objectives

I try to infuse my Earth Science instruction with environmental issues in alignment with the standards-based curriculum. The general theme of "environmental stewardship" is introductory to the course and appears throughout many units I teach in Earth Science. I would like this unit to impart a sense of environmental responsibility, conscious living, and critical consumerism to my students. In addition to the underlying "environmental morality" of the unit, it is intended that students gain a basic understanding of fundamental science concepts and skills that will be built upon in subsequent units of instruction in Earth Science as well as the Biology and Physical Science requirements they must fulfill as they matriculate through their sophomore, junior, and senior years in high school. The primary learning objective will be an understanding of the energy resources currently employed to operate human technology, infrastructure, goods manufacture, and services.

Supportive to the above learning objectives is the general concept of energy physics. Students should be able to explain what energy is in a broad sense. This understanding will include the fact that energy is a very extensive concept, and it is defined as the potential of materials and systems to perform useful work. ⁵ Students will also be expected to know the basic forms that energy assumes, especially those which appear throughout the course curriculum, namely kinetic, potential, thermal, chemical, electromagnetic, and nuclear energy.

The instructional sequence of the unit will also include an overview of energy resources, and students will be able to distinguish between renewable and nonrenewable resources. ⁶ They will identify which energy resources are considered fossil fuels and describe the processes by which these resources are extracted and used to produce energy. They will learn the environmental burden that unchecked consumption of fossil fuel energy sources is placing on the sustainability of the planet and the need for alternatives to petroleum energy resources. I will also provide a discussion of the main alternative energy sources and their use in California. Those given treatment in this unit include solar, nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and tidal. Class discussions and student research will be used to explore how each resource is used to produce energy, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each energy source, and the potential of each to provide energy into the future.

Additional general science methods and skills supported and necessitated by this unit are observation, measurement, calculating unit conversions, and data collection and analysis (computational and graphical). I have also designed scenarios in which students engage in collaboration to identify a problem, conduct research on the defined problem, and synthesize concepts in developing a solution to the problem. The results of their collaboration and research will be used as evidence to provide a critique on a technology or system within a defined sector and design a proposal for mitigating local environmental impact. The final student report will incorporate both written and verbal communication of results.