YourÂ Familyâ€™sÂ CarbonÂ Footprint

Type of Resource: Link

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Students investigate how much greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide and methane) their family releases into the atmosphere each year and relate it to climate change. To address this, students use the Environmental Protection Agency Personal Emissions Calculator to estimate their family's greenhouse gas emissions and to think about how their family could reduce those emissions.

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

MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

Apply concepts of statistics and probability (including mean, median, mode, and variability) to analyze and characterize data, using digital tools when feasible.

Analyze data using tools, technologies, and/or models (e.g., computational, mathematical) in order to make valid and reliable scientific claims or determine an optimal design solution.

Apply concepts of statistics and probability (including determining function fits to data, slope, intercept, and correlation coefficient for linear fits) to scientific and engineering questions and problems, using digital tools when feasible.

Ask questions to clarify and/or refine a model, an explanation, or an engineering problem.

Ask questions to clarify and refine a model, an explanation, or an engineering problem.

Construct a scientific explanation based on valid and reliable evidence obtained from sources (including the students’ own experiments) and the assumption that theories and laws that describe the natural world operate today as they did in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

Apply scientific reasoning, theory, and/or models to link evidence to the claims to assess the extent to which the reasoning and data support the explanation or conclusion.

Evaluate competing design solutions based on jointly developed and agreed-upon design criteria.

Construct, use, and/or present an oral and written argument or counter-arguments based on data and evidence.

Apply ratios, rates, percentages, and unit conversions in the context of complicated measurement problems involving quantities with derived or compound units (such as mg/mL, kg/m3, acre-feet, etc.).

Communicate scientific and/or technical information (e.g. about a proposed object, tool, process, system) in writing and/or through oral presentations.

Communicate scientific and/or technical information or ideas (e.g. about phenomena and/or the process of development and the design and performance of a proposed process or system) in multiple formats (including orally, graphically, textually, and mathematically).

The sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources.

Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming). Reducing the level of climate change and reducing human vulnerability to whatever climate changes do occur depend on the understanding of climate science, engineering capabilities, and other kinds of knowledge, such as understanding of human behavior and on applying that knowledge wisely in decisions and activities.

Scientists and engineers can make major contributions by developing technologies that produce less pollution and waste and that preclude ecosystem degradation.

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.

Algebraic thinking is used to examine scientific data and predict the effect of a change in one variable on another (e.g., linear growth vs. exponential growth).

Using the concept of orders of magnitude allows one to understand how a model at one scale relates to a model at another scale.

Energy may take different forms (e.g. energy in fields, thermal energy, energy of motion).

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

YourÂ Familyâ€™sÂ CarbonÂ Footprint

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Science and Engineering Practices

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