Energy Sciences

Activities

Focusing on climate change, my unit will explore a multitude of global phenomena, including an increase in global temperatures and the shrinking of the polar ice caps, which are primarily caused by humanity’s past and current energy consumption practices. Managing and using energy resources will be key topics in my unit. Students will learn about the impacts and consequences of behaviors and actions taken by individuals when consuming energy. The unit will take approximately three weeks, with students meeting once per day for 55-minute periods.

In the opening of my unit, students will participate in an activity where they will simulate sea level rise. Using clay and water in two clear trays, students will create distinct sections of land with coastal cities and oceans. Ice cubes will be placed in one tray in an ocean area to represent sea ice. In another tray, ice cubes will be placed on land to represent land ice. As the class period progresses and the ice cubes melt, students will be asked to watch their trays and record data to see if the sea level rises and if there is water invading their cities. After discussing their findings, students will then view a map of nearby coastal cities Santa Cruz and San Francisco and discover how they will be affected by sea level rise. Then students will be shown their own city of San Jose. It will also be affected by global warming as water from the Bay will inundate our city. Students will then be asked to remember and discuss other disasters that have affected us locally and nationally. These events include severe droughts and water rationing throughout California, mudslides in the Santa Cruz Mountains, floods in the city of San Jose and wildfires in our state with corresponding air pollution in our valley as a result of those fires. Finally, students will be shown related videos and images while having the opportunity to explain their own personal experiences in the San Francisco Bay Area and California.

In the next part of the unit, students will be asked to document and assess their own energy consumption and impact on the environment by creating paper and Web models that represent their own Ecological Handprint and Carbon Footprint. A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds that are emitted by a particular person or community. An ecological footprint is the amount of land required to sustain a person’s or community’s use of natural resources. Various behaviors and actions generate a certain amount of resources used or carbon emitted. These include, but are not limited to, modes of transportation, types of food eaten and methods of electricity consumption. Our beliefs about conservation and the environment can have a major influence on the actions we take that determine our carbon and ecological footprints.

Education about energy and the environment have the power to change people’s beliefs. It is the hope that by having students categorize their consumption of energy and other natural resources, as well as their attitudes and actions (or non-actions) toward conservation, they will become more cognizant of the consequences of their actions. Once students have an understanding of what type of impact they are having on the environment, they will analyze their behaviors and come up with ways to become greener citizens. We will revisit these student-generated ideas at the end of the unit.

In the middle part of my unit, I plan to hone in on one aspect of climate change:  the rise of CO₂ levels in our atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), a major source of energy. We will analyze how increased CO₂ traps the sun’s heat energy in the atmosphere, a process called the greenhouse effect. Global temperatures rise as a result, which can lead to many catastrophic events. To illustrate this rise in average temperature, students will be shown a time-lapse video that displays global values and colors representing temperature anomalies per year from 1880 to 2017 where almost all temperature variations in the 2000s are alarmingly red (hot).

As an activity to start off this exploration, students will be given a news article stating that the temperatures in a fictitious city have been heating up over the past 15 years and are continuing to rise. They will be informed that this trend is not just confined to their city but that it is happening globally. After being divided into discussion groups, students are each given a different article to read that contains one hypothesis of what might be causing this global trend. One of the hypothesis articles shows CO₂ levels taken from air bubbles preserved in ice core samples starting 420,000 years before the present day. Students will verbally share their hypothesis articles with the group. Together, students in the group determine which hypothesis is most plausible. They will then write a claim evidence and reasoning paragraph citing evidence from their chosen hypothesis article and reasoning from their group discussion. Afterwards, the Keeling Curve will be displayed with current atmospheric CO₂ levels. The Keeling Curve complements the most plausible hypothesis article. We will then conduct a class discussion where students take notes on why global warming is happening, primarily due to our use of fossil fuels and our insatiable need for energy. We will relate this back to sea level rise and the various other natural disasters being exacerbated by global warming.

In order to conceptualize CO₂, a gas, students will do an activity using bromothymol blue indicator to see the presence of CO₂ in a substance. Students will blow bubbles into a beaker of water and indicator mixture. The indicator will change from blue to green to yellow with the introduction of CO₂ from their breath. Students will also be shown a demo where CO₂ is created in a beaker with a simple reaction between baking soda and vinegar. The CO₂ gas will then be poured out of the container to extinguish a flame. Both of these activities will help students to visualize the presence of this invisible gas. This leads us into a discussion where students will learn where CO₂ gets recycled back into the environment and where it does not. To illustrate that CO₂ in the air and CO₂ in the water have different heat capacities, I will conduct a demonstration using balloons. A balloon filled with air will pop immediately when exposed to a heat source (in this case a lighter flame) and a balloon filled with water will take a much longer time to pop.

I will also discuss how mining for fossil fuels can also negatively impact our environment with a fossil fuel mining activity where students “mine” for chocolate chips using chocolate chip cookies. Students will also learn about air pollution with videos and a candle demonstration collecting soot.

At the end of my unit, students will research renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and water in a jigsaw project. The goal is for students to recognize how these resources are better for the planet because they do not release CO₂ into the atmosphere. At the same time, we will explore the challenges involved in gathering and dispersing these renewable resources on a wide scale and analyze current solutions being developed.

As part of this culminating activity, students will design and then build a model of a green-energy home of the future that has a minimal carbon footprint and that utilizes the source of renewable energy most relevant to their given area. In groups, students will collaborate in class to make design decisions and illustrate the plan for their home as a paper blueprint or computerized visualization. Each group will be assigned a location in California for their future home where they can incorporate a nearby renewable energy resource. Sites include San Jose, which would be a good location for solar power, Livermore near the Altamont Pass, an area ideal for wind power, The Geysers, a geothermal location and Oroville, a location known for hydroelectric power.

After pitching their design plan and gaining approval to proceed, students will work together outside of school to build a physical model of their green home using materials of their choice. Once the models are complete, students will bring them to school and present them to the class.

At the end of the unit, students will revisit their carbon and ecological footprints and reflect on ways that they can mitigate the disastrous consequences of the heightened greenhouse effect. They will examine their families’ current usage of fossil fuels and identify how they can practice greener methods of energy consumption while conserving energy resources. As an assessment, students will write a letter about climate change and energy conservation to family members or politicians and include what people can do to diminish negative effects using evidence covered throughout the unit.