Problem-Based Learning – Fracking and the Marcellus Shale

The Earth System Science (ESS) module Fracking – Marcellus Shale from the Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA) is a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) activity designed to introduce your students to a current environmental issue and explore it using ESS’s Earth System Science Analysis (ESSA).  The ESSA approach asks students to examine how the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere 1) are impacted by the issue; 2) affect the issue; and 3) affect each other.

The module contains an extensive list of high quality resources pertaining to fracking along with a compilation of suggested activities appropriate for a range of learners, from beginners to advanced.

To learn more about using ESS modules in the K-12 classroom, click here.

If you have used this resource with your students, please leave a comment!

Hydropower Resources from the NEED Project

The following resources from the NEED Project can be used to introduce students to hydropower:

Wonders of Water Teacher Guide and Student Guide (elementary)

Energy of Moving Water Teacher Guide and Student Guide (middle)

Exploring Hydroelectricity Teacher Guide and Student Guide (high)

Energy and Our Rivers is a unit designed for middle and high school students to investigate the role rivers play in transporting energy sources across the country.  In Activity 2, Energy in Flowing Water, students learn that that the upper, middle, and lower courses of a river have different energy levels; this could lead into a discussion about how moving water provides energy and into the different types of hydropower plants.

Don’t forget that there is also a collection of graphics from NEED’s curriculum guides, including graphics that can be used to teach about hydropower.

Updated Curriculum: Learn Nuclear Science With Marbles

Learn Nuclear Science With Marbles is a curriculum for grades 7-12 science teachers that uses a marble model nucleus* to provide an interactive learning experience.  The Marble Nuclei Project is co-sponsored by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) and National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). This curriculum was highlighted in The Physics Teacher (Feb 18 2010).

This curriculum was recently updated to include:

• NEW activities and a heavily-expanded fragmentation box section
• NEW lesson sections with advanced topics that had been requested by teachers
• Improved instructions for building your own fragmentation boxes
• Accompanying Powerpoint presentation (see Guided Lesson)

*According to the teacher’s guide for these lessons, you will need colored magnetic marbles (www.cynmar.com): 12 yellow, 12 green, 1 blue, 1 pink and two 5/8’’ neodymium sphere magnets (www.kjmagnetics.com).

The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network

The CLEAN project, a part of the National Science Digital Library, “provides a reviewed collection of resources coupled with the tools to enable an online community to share and discuss teaching about climate and energy science.”  The CLEAN project has outlined six fundamental concepts that support energy awareness and currently offers 98 energy-related lessons that have been scientifically and pedagogically reviewed with more lessons to come.

Lesson: Evaluating Woody Biomass Options for North Carolina’s Electricity Future

As coal-burning power plants seek ways to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions in response to the North Carolina Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS), some are evaluating the use of woody biomass for the generation of steam, heat, and/or electricity by co-firing with coal.  In this lesson, students will learn about and assess the potential for various types of woody biomass to replace coal with emphasis on North Carolina’s biomass resources and their region specifically. Students assume the role of various stakeholders and participate in a discussion with classmates who represent officials from a local power plant that is seeking to substitute 20% of its coal with woody biomass.  The class will evaluate each available woody biomass option and come to a group consensus about which option, if any, is best from an economic, environmental and public health perspective.

Woody Biomass options to be evaluated in this lesson include:  wood waste/forest residues (chips made from bark, sawdust and other byproducts of milling timber and making paper; logging waste); torrefied wood; and pellets from higher value wood, including roundwood and short-rotation woody crops.

Light pollution, energy waste, and our vanishing night

Is your town wasting energy by sending it right into outer space?

To follow-up on the Earth at Night post from earlier this month, I asked Amy Sayle, PhD, from UNC’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center to share resources for introducing students to light pollution as well as the solutions that exist to minimize light pollution:

At live star shows at Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, people often gasp when the Milky Way appears. Many students visiting on school field trips have seen this hazy band of starlight only in our simulated sky, because light pollution has made the night sky vanish where they live.  The main culprit? Poorly designed lighting. The International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), offers a downloadable fact sheet that could be used to introduce your students to the topic of light pollution.

Unshielded lights fail to direct light only where it’s needed and as a result billions of dollars are wasted every year in the United States on such unnecessary lighting. In this brochure about light pollution and energy, the IDA estimates the wasted energy at 22,000 gigawatt-hours a year, or the equivalent of more than 450 million gallons of gasoline.  All that misdirected light doesn’t even enhance our safety. The things we’d like to see outdoors after dark, such as roads, sidewalks, and muggers are all found on the ground, not in the sky. Furthermore, glare sent into our eyes by unshielded lights is actually counter-productive for safety.

By using well-designed, pedestrian friendly lighting such as the shielded fixture illustrated below, we not only save energy, we also enhance our safety, and protect the night sky, wildlife, and even human health.

You can engage your students on this issue with the GLOBE at Night citizen science project, IDA lesson plans and student projects, or with the 2011 documentary The City Dark.

Students could also investigate how lighting in their community might be improved, or perhaps is already being improved by city officials, so that stargazing no longer happens for them only at the planetarium.

An example of a pedestrian friendly light fixture that prevents light pollution.

The Role of Light in my Life: A Student Journaling Activity

According to the US Department of Energy, lighting accounts for about 11 percent of energy use in residential buildings and 25 percent in commercial buildings!  For incandescent bulbs, only about 10 percent of the electricity consumed by the bulb is actually converted into light! Thus, inefficient lighting coupled with wasteful consumer behavior means a lot of energy is wasted in lighting our homes, schools, and businesses.

This homework activity is designed to get your students thinking about the role of lighting in their daily life and how the use of lighting impacts the environment through electricity generation, the materials used to produce lighting products, and even its impact on the nighttime sky (light pollution).

1.  Ask your students to keep a 24 hour journal documenting their use of and reliance on light at home, school, work, extracurricular activities etc. Hopefully they will also consider street lights, stop lights, and other outdoor lights.  All of this lighting requires electricity and in NC, most of the electricity is going to come from coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

2. At the end of the 24 hours ask student to reflect on how the use of indoor and outdoor lighting impacts the environment through  electricity generation, the materials used to produce lighting products, and its impact on the nighttime sky (light pollution).

3.  Next ask students to envision or even draw/diagram an imaginary day in which the amount of energy consumed by lighting their environment is reduced.  Prompt students to consider how changes in their behavior as well changes to light bulbs, lighting fixtures and design, etc. can reduce the amount of energy consumed by lighting.   Strategies for reducing energy consumption can include more efficient bulbs (CFLs and LEDs), appropriate use of bulbs and lighting fixtures, use of day lighting, as well as conservation behaviors by consumers.

Activity: Comparing the Energy-related Properties of Incandescent and CFL Bulbs

The NEED Project has an activity titled Facts of Light that has students compare the energy-related properties of different types of light bulbs that have equivalent light outputs.  The goals of the activity are:

- To compare the heat output of incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs.

- To compare the light output of incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs.

- To compare the energy consumption of incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs.

- To develop an awareness and understanding of life cycle cost analysis.

Facts of Light is available for students in grades 6-8 in NEED’s curriculum Monitoring and Mentoring Teacher Guide and Student Guide

and for students in grades 9-12 in NEED’s curriculum Learning and Conserving Teacher Guide and Student Guide.

Asking students to conduct these same activities with an equivalent light emitting diodes (LED) bulb is a possible extension.  At a minimum students could do a life cycle cost analysis for LED bulbs.

Did you know that Texas is the national leader in wind power?

Who has seen the wind? Harnessing Alternative Energy is lesson written by a NC science teacher and now available at Learn NC.  In Activity 1 of this lesson, students compare potential wind resources in Texas and North Carolina and watch a 3 1/2 minute video title “Roping the Wind in Texas” from the Powering a Nation website.  This activity also utilizes Google Earth.

An accompanying student worksheet is available for download.

Also, you may be interested in supplementing this lesson with an  8 minute video excerpt from the recent PBS Special, Earth: The Operators’ Manual, which highlights the wind corridor that runs though the Great Plains and on up into Canada with emphasis on how Texas is taking advantage of this resource.  Additional teacher resources are also available.

Lessons from WindWise Education

Following up on the news that NC may see its first commercial wind farm in the Northeastern part of the state next year, I wanted to share two lessons that may be of interest to teachers in grades 6-12.  These lessons from WindWiseEducation, will enable students to learn how to analyze data (maps,
tables, and written information) to compare and contrast two potential sites for a wind farm” (lesson 14) and “what factors impact the economics of a wind farm and  compare and contrast two potential sites” (lesson 15).

These lessons, along with others, are available for free download following a quick registration process.