Teachers TryScience

Part 1: Introduction

1. Begin with a KWL about climate change.
2. Prompt students to think about some actions they can take to confront potential climate change impacts such as heat waves or intense storms. As a class, generate a list of these actions. These may include building sea walls to prevent damage to costal areas or creating more cooling stations to help address heat waves. Students may also list actions such as taking public transportation or planting trees to help reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
3. Tell students that climate change is already happening and people all over the world are already experiencing effects. Explain the difference between climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation.
4. Ask students to look at the list they generated earlier. Which of these actions fall under the category of mitigation? Adaptation? Can some of the actions be both? Are all of the actions environmentally “positive” (i.e. Turning up the air conditioning helps us cool down, but uses energy which perpetuates the problem.)?
5. Distribute the Confronting Climate Change cards. Ask groups of 3 students to work together to sort the cards into piles that represent mitigation activities and adaptation activities. Take a few moments to discuss how students grouped the cards. If there are differences between groups, ask students to explain their reasoning.

6. Stress that although mitigation activity is important, adaptation is essential too.
7. Tell students that in order for them to find innovative ways to adapt to climate change, they must understand how climate change can affect different systems including both environmental systems and man-made systems, such as transportation and agriculture.
8. Ask students to choose one of the cards they have identified as an example of adaptation, and have them name one environmental and one man-made system that are affected by that adaptation example.

Part 2: Seeing

1. Remind students that the first step in the Innovation Process is Seeing. For about 7 minutes, have groups of 3 students go through the Seeing timeline in the THINK app and identify tools that might help them gather more information about climate change.
2. Have groups share 1-2 responses. Responses should include when on the timeline the tool can be found.
3. Tell students that they will now perform a series of investigations to focus in on climate change impacts related to changes in precipitation and how these impacts can affect their school. They will then develop their own tool to identify the first steps needed to make an adaptation plan.
4. To aid in the first investigation, students will be using a very common tool they may have located on the Seeing timeline: the thermometer. Present students with one of the thermometers you have.
5. Ask students to return to the timeline and see how the thermometer you have presented compares to that described in the timeline. (The thermometer is found at 1612 under “Temperature.”) Students may notice that the thermometer described in the app only measured fluctuations and not actual degrees. Tell students that although we take many tools such as the thermometer for granted, they represent huge steps in the way humans have been able to explore and understand the world.

Part 3: Precipitation Changes

1. Ask students how climate change might affect levels and patterns of precipitation in different parts of the world. Depending upon their prior knowledge, current events, and where they live, students may mention both increases and decreases in precipitation.
2. Take a moment to define drought. Point out that drought doesn’t necessarily mean dust-bowl type conditions, but instead refers to extended periods of abnormally dry conditions. What is abnormally dry in some areas, could be normal in others, so drought is actually a complex and relative term. Ask students how it is possible that climate change might contribute to both flooding and drought.
3. Be sure that students understand that it is not accurate to say that a specific storm is caused by climate change, but we can say that climate change has the potential to make both heavy precipitation and drought more severe. Ask students how it is possible that climate change can cause extremes.
4. Tell students that they will now investigate this question by creating a model of part of a weather system. Ask students what a model is. Be sure that students understand that models are not just physical models, but can also be sets of equations. Models are anything that help us represent and explore how complex systems work. You may wish to refer back to the discussion of models in the lesson THINK: The Process of Innovation.
5. Mention to students that they should be sure to record their observations and measurements. They will be developing an adaptation tool, and data is important in encouraging people to use a tool or idea.
6. Split students into groups of 3-4.
7. Instruct each group to take two beakers and put an inch of soil in the bottom of each.
8. Students should place a thermometer into each beaker so that the thermometer rests on top of the soil.
9. Students should add 15 mL of water to each beaker.
10. Instruct students to tightly cover both beakers with plastic wrap.
11. Students should put one of the beakers under the heat lamp.
12. Students should record observations every 2 minutes for a total of 5 recordings over the next 10 minutes. (In between observations, students can begin cleaning up spilled soil, etc.)
13. After 10 minutes have passed, ask groups to share what they observed. Students will have noticed that the beaker with the lamp had a higher temperature, drier soil, and more condensation on the plastic wrap or on the sides of the beaker.
14. Have students set those materials aside and gather the balloons and bottles.
15. Instruct each group to place a balloon over the top of both glass bottles.
16. Tell students to place one bottle in cool water and one bottle in the hot water. Students should record their observations.
17. After about two minutes, ask students to share some of their results. Students will have noticed that the balloon on top of the bottle placed in the warm water expanded while the one in cold water did not. Ask students why this is the case. (Air molecules move more quickly and farther apart when heated causing expansion of the gases within the balloon, which causes the balloon itself to expand).
18. Tell students that temperature is just one factor that affects the cycle of water. Higher temperatures lead to increased evaporation, which results in more water vapor in the atmosphere, but also drier land. As warm air expands, it is able to hold more water, and warm, moisture-laden air is associated with storms, so the increase in temperature and moisture is resulting in more intense precipitation. The warm, wet air, does not always stay directly over one area, but instead air masses move. In this way, the amount of precipitation in different areas is impacted in different ways. Changing one factor in the system, in this case temperature, can change the way the cycle functions.
19. Ask students how this experiment represents a scientific model. (It allowed students to observe the interaction between temperature and water and then apply these observations to their understanding of the water cycle in a way that would have been difficult to observe on a larger scale.)