In this activity students utilize collected data and propose solutions to mitigate food waste in their school.
This lesson outlines for students how to design and carry out an investigation to audit their school’s food waste system.
This animated video explains how the molecular structure of atmospheric gases can absorb and re-radiate infrared energy. The video uses simple models and analogies to aid in student understanding.
Students explore the greenhouse effect in this lesson using a computer simulation and develop a model for how it works.
This is a kinesthetic activity that demonstrates how shortwave radiation emitted by the sun and longwave thermal radiation emitted by the earth interact differently in the atmosphere. It allows students to experience this difference and reinforces their understanding of greenhouse gases as well. Students should have an understanding of shortwave and longwave thermal radiation and of greenhouse gases before doing this activity, but there is a minimal amount of background information about those topics included in this pdf. Additional resources/background info for teachers can be found on the website for the Little Shop of Physics.
In this design challenge lesson, students examine their school food system and develop an investigation about food waste in order to know what should change.
In this kinesthetic activity, the concept of energy budget is strengthened as students conduct three simulations using play money as units of energy, and students serve as parts of a planetary radiation balance model. Students will determine the energy budget of a planet by manipulating gas concentrations, energy inputs and outputs in the system in this lesson that supports the study of climate on Mars, Mercury, Venus and Earth. The lesson supports understanding of the real-world problem of contemporary climate change. The resource includes a teacher's guide and several student worksheets. This is the second of four activities in the lesson, How do Atmospheres affect planetary temperatures?, within Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The resource aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.
In this lesson, students explore how human activities will continue to impact Antarctic ice, discuss human contributions to climate change, and investigate what we can do to stop/reverse these negative effects.
This activity uses two interactive simulations to illustrate climate change, 1) at the micro/molecular level - modeling the impact of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on surface temperature and 2) at the macro level - modeling changes in glacier thickness and flow as a result of rising surface temperature.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"A research team at MIT has spent years trying to unravel how climate change will affect Earth’s habitability in the future. Using sophisticated computer simulations, they’ve shown that extreme heatwaves will sweep across a region spanning southwest and south Asia, potentially rendering some areas inhospitable to human life. Now, in the third part of this ongoing study, they’ve shifted focus to China – currently the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Using regional climate models that examine how irrigation impacts surface conditions, the team found that the current pace of greenhouse gas emissions will leave North China Plain, an intensely irrigated region that is presently home to about 400 million people, vulnerable to extreme heatwaves, making it difficult for humans to survive in what is now one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. The reason? Irrigation exacerbates heatwave conditions, worsening the impact of climate change..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
For this lesson, the guiding Concept Question is: What is climate change and how does climate relate to greenhouse gas concentrations over time? This activity is the second lesson in a nine-lesson module 'Visualizing and Understanding the Science of Climate Change' produced by the International Year of Chemistry project (2011).
This lesson explores if it is normal that world temperatures are rising at the currently observed fast pace.
This video segment from 'Earth: The Operators' Manual' explores how we know that today's increased levels of CO2 are caused by humans burning fossil fuels and not by some natural process, such as volcanic out-gassing. Climate scientist Richard Alley provides a detailed step-by-step explanation that examines the physics and chemistry of different "flavors," or isotopes, of carbon in Earth's atmosphere.
If you follow environmental news at all, you'll be familiar with the most common cause of extinction in the world today: habitat loss. Habitat destruction threatens the survival of some the world's most charismatic organisms animals like the giant panda, the Sumatran tiger, and the Asian elephant. Humans have encroached on the wilderness in order to farm, mine, log, and build, and in the process, we've pushed the natural inhabitants of those areas into smaller and smaller refuges. Making matters worse, global climate change caused by our production of greenhouse gases is altering the environments within those refuges, forcing species to contend with new challenges. While these might seem like entirely modern problems, recent research indicates that's not the case and that current levels of habitat loss and climate change could have devastating consequences.
Lessons teach core knowledge about the science of climate change, explore conflicting views, and integrate critical thinking skills. Students will apply knowledge of climate change to a rigorous analysis of media messages through asking and answering questions about accuracy, currency, credibility, sourcing, and bias. Lessons address basic climate science, the causes of climate change, scientific debate and disinformation, the consequences of global warming, the precautionary principle, carbon footprints, moral choices, and the history of global warming in media, science, and politics.
Students learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the greenhouse effect. They construct their own miniature greenhouses and explore how their designs take advantage of heat transfer processes to create controlled environments. They record and graph measurements, comparing the greenhouse indoor and outdoor temperatures over time. Students are also introduced to global issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and their relationship to global warming.
In this activity, students compare carbon dioxide data from Mauna Loa Observatory, Barrow, Alaska, and the South Pole over the past 40 years. Students use the data to learn about what causes short-term and long-term changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This activity makes extensive use of Excel.
Do you ever wonder how a greenhouse gas affects the climate, or why the ozone layer is important? Use the sim to explore how light interacts with molecules in our atmosphere.
In this short video from ClimateCentral, host Jessica Harrop explains what evidence scientists have for claiming that recent global warming is caused by humans and is not just part of a natural cycle.
This lab exercise is designed to provide a basic understanding of a real-world scientific investigation. Learners are introduced to the concept of tropospheric ozone as an air pollutant due to human activities and burning of fossil fuels. Students analyze and visualize data to investigate this air pollution and climate change problem, determine the season in which it commonly occurs, and communicate the results.