Challenging Pollution
Although we may not often do it, it's easy to list ways that power plants,
automobiles, and handy household products benefit us. But are these and other
technology-driven products and services benign—to us, to the environment, and
to other living things? Use one or more of the resources in this section to get
your students thinking about the causes and effects of pollution and what
individuals, communities, and businesses can do to lessen pollution problems.
You can't talk about why acid rain exists or what can be done about this
environmental problem without addressing humans' use of technology and natural
resources. This site from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does just
that. It walks students through the basics of acid deposition in two
complementary tutorials. You may want students to use one or both. The first
takes the form of five questions, including What Is Acid Rain?, Why is Acid
Rain Harmful? and What Can You Do? It does a truly excellent job of explaining
topics like acidity, the environmental and health effects of acid rain, and the
fossil fuel connection. If you want to connect the tutorial to an assignment,
here are three ideas:
- Partner with the social studies teacher and have students learn more about
government regulations of air pollution and acid deposition.
- Ask students to share what they have learned, just as the last section of
the tutorial encourages them to do. They can create a product that communicates
about acid rain to an audience of their choice (parents, younger students,
government leaders, etc.).
- Have students research the technologies used to control emissions from
power plants and include a graph illustrating a key idea in their report.
The second tutorial, called the Acid Rain Animation, uses images and less text
to convey some of the same information. Games and activities, which may be too
young for some middle school students, are also offered on the site. MSP full record
If your city, formerly known as Dumptown, now bears the esteemed name of Recycle
City, you must have made some significant and lasting changes! Visit the
Activities page for information and ideas for incorporating one or both of this
site's two features (an interactive map and a game) into your classes. By
clicking around in the quadrants of this fictitious place, students can check
out myriad examples of the sound environmental practices that are now the norm
in Recycle City. In the Dumptown Game, students become the city manager who
needs to transform Dumptown (a name like that can't be good for the citizens or
the local economy!). Students choose which programs to implement, and then
watch Dumptown change as the programs go into effect. Bar graphs display the
resulting reductions in waste, and the total cost of the programs is shown.
Like the site suggests, consider giving your students a goal to achieve as
manager that corresponds to the particulars of your curriculum. Reading graphs
and working with a $200,000 budget to clean up Dumptown are just two examples
of the mathematics embedded in this excellent web site. Use it to prompt your
students to think about how products and actions can have positive and negative
effects on the environment. Ask them to consider how their own family, school,
neighborhood, and city are making cumulative changes to their local
environment. What's going well, and where do they see room for improvements? Is
there an area in which they can influence change? MSP full record
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Copyright
May 2007 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work
supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the National Science Foundation.
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
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