Stabilization Wedges Game

Type of Resource: Link

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Description

This is a team-based activity that teaches students about the scale of the greenhouse gas problem and the technologies that already exist which can dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Students select carbon-cutting strategies to construct a carbon mitigation profile, filling in the wedges of a climate stabilization triangle.

HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.

HS-ETS1-3 Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.

Analyze data to identify design features or characteristics of the components of a proposed process or system to optimize it relative to criteria for success.

Ask questions that arise from examining models or a theory, to clarify and/or seek additional information and relationships.

Design, evaluate, and/or refine a solution to a complex real-world problem, based on scientific knowledge, student-generated sources of evidence, prioritized criteria, and tradeoff considerations.

Create and/or revise a computational model or simulation of a phenomenon, designed device, process, or system.

Evaluate merits and limitations of two different models of the same proposed tool, process, mechanism, or system in order to select or revise a model that best fits the evidence or design criteria.

Make directional hypotheses that specify what happens to a dependent variable when an independent variable is manipulated.

At the macroscopic scale, energy manifests itself in multiple ways, such as in motion, sound, light, and thermal energy.

When evaluating solutions it is important to take into account a range of constraints including cost, safety, reliability and aesthetics and to consider social, cultural and environmental impacts.

Though the magnitudes of human impacts are greater than they have ever been, so too are human abilities to model, predict, and manage current and future impacts.

Systems can be designed to cause a desired effect.

Investigating or designing new systems or structures requires a detailed examination of the properties of different materials, the structures of different components, and connections of components to reveal its function and/or solve a problem.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed—it only moves between one place and another place, between objects and/or fields, or between systems.

Systems can be designed for greater or lesser stability.

Models can be used to predict the behavior of a system, but these predictions have limited precision and reliability due to the assumptions and approximations inherent in models.

Patterns of performance of designed systems can be analyzed and interpreted to reengineer and improve the system.

Stabilization Wedges Game

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Description

Performance Expectations

Science and Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts