In this module, students engage in a visual demonstration on the causes & effects of air pollutants on air quality and kinesthetic activities on particulate matter & visibility.

During this module, students take a virtual mobile lab drive with scientists to investigate and learn about atmospheric carbon gases, their sources, and impacts on air quality.

The DISCOVER-AQ curriculum integrates real-word research with real-life learning to answer the question: What are the causes and effects of air quality issues and how do they affect human health and the environment?

Our planet is becoming hot. In fact, Earth may be warming faster than ever before. This warming will challenge society throughout the 21st century. How do we cope with rising seas? How will we prepare for more intense hurricanes? How will we adapt to debilitating droughts and heat waves? Scientists are striving to improve predictions of how the environment will change and how it will impact humans. Earth in the Future: Predicting Climate Change and Its Impacts Over the Next Century is designed to provide the state of the art of climate science, the impact of warming on humans, as well as ways we can adapt. Every student will understand the challenges and opportunities of living in the 21st century.

In this lesson, students create a vision for the future of their community and identify what resources are most important to them as a starting point for resilience planning.

Module: “the Greenhouse effect: a natural phenomenon that has been adversely affected by human activities”IntroductionThis module is about the Greenhouse effect and provides the basic concepts of this natural phenomenon as well as the repercussions on it by human activities. The intended group of learners is students of 10 to13 years of age and it is a module that may fit into a course about the Environment. The components that consist this module include videos, interactive models on the computer, experiments and measurements, analogies, the construction of a greenhouse and physical activities to illustrate the vibration of different elements.Set of goalsAfter the completion of this module, the students should be able to:- Recognize that the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon without which no life would exist on Earth and describe how it works- Compare and contrast the characteristics of other planets of our solar system and reach conclusions about their status- Name the main greenhouse gases and illustrate the way they react to absorbing energy-  Associate the concentration of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with the rising of the global temperature after using interactive simulations- Justify the analogy used for the greenhouse effect – simulating Earth to a greenhouse – and point out the discrepancies of this analogy- Conduct experiments about the greenhouse effect and draw conclusions about how temperature rises- Be aware of the adverse effects human activities have had on this natural phenomenonThe processTo initiate the first talk and to present the topic of the module we will show a 2’ video titled: Global Warming: The Physics of the Greenhouse Effect (https://www.oercommons.org/courses/global-warming-the-physics-of-the-greenhouse-effect/view )As soon as the video is finished we discuss with the students if they have ever heard of the terms “greenhouse effect” and “global warming” and ask them to share what they know.We make a short presentation of the components and processes of the Greenhouse gases, as they are found on https://wikieducator.org/Green_house_effect and https://www.windows2universe.org/?page=/earth/interior/greenhouse_effect.html and then show them the 6’ video by prof. Denning talking about the greenhouse effect and the greenhouse gases reaction to the absorbing of energy. The concept of infrared radiation emitted by the earth is not easily understood by students since it is not visible as the light from the Sun. There is an analogy we can use by showing them a reptile light lamp, where light is not visible but the thermoradiation emitted is felt when we feel the heat with our hand. This is an idea taken from http://denning.atmos.colostate.edu/videos/Climate/CO2.tips4teachers.mp4Then we ask them to play a game on how the different greenhouses vibrate when they absorb energy, so as to use their bodies and come to experience the whole process. The idea is taken by the “little shop of physics” video presenting an activity where students wear different colored hats that represent different chemical elements forming certain greenhouse gases and move their bodies to different directions simulating the vibration of these gases when they absorb the infrared radiation emitted from the earth. (http://denning.atmos.colostate.edu/videos/Climate/CO2.tips4teachers.mp4 )The next activity is based on an MIT resource found on https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/earth-atmospheric-and-planetary-sciences/12-340-global-warming-science-spring-2012/lecture-notes/MIT12_340S12_lec5.pdf where the idea about comparing the planets Earth’s, Mars’ and Venus’ atmospheres is introduced. The students are given facts about these planets and are asked to compare the components and thickness of their atmospheres and their temperature range. They are led to conclude that too much of CO2 in the atmosphere would result into the scorching temperatures of Venus, while too little CO2 in the atmosphere would result into the freezing temperatures of Mars (information taken by  http://www.kidsastronomy.com/venus.htm, http://www.kidsastronomy.com/mars.htm)Working on the analogy of the greenhouse, students can perform a series of experiments. They are given instructions on how to make a model greenhouse and by putting lamps over it we can simulate the whole process. There are also instructions given on how to take measurements and make graphs. They process the data and come to realize how a greenhouse works (https://authoring.concord.org/activities/1052/single_page/52db8f13-a8c5-4513-86b1-2428a8407c4b ). It is important that we point out what each object represents in the analogy (the sun is the lamp, the earth is the greenhouse and the greenhouse gases is the glass or plexiglass the greenhouse is made of) as well as the discrepancies there are between the model and the real phenomenon (e.g. the greenhouse gases absorb and emit back the infrared radiation emitted by Earth – they do not absorb the light coming from the Sun).Next, there are different kinds of interactive simulations the students can perform on the computers, so we ask them to take turns in front of the computers and interact with the data given in the simulations and record back how the changes in temperature occur. There is one simulation where you add and remove greenhouse gases on the interactive model and the temperature rises and falls accordingly. (https://authoring.concord.org/activities/1032/single_page/93da01c3-33cf-438e-bfa1-c211c1a7236b). Another simulation shows the infrared spectra of the greenhouse gases and how the vibrated and absorb energy and you can add and remove gases monitoring the changes (http://www.explainingclimatechange.ca/Climate%20Change/javascript/IR%20Windows/IRWindows.html). There is one more simulation on how temperature rises when there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, without naming these gases separately (https://www.oercommons.org/courses/the-greenhouse-effect/view). After the students have played with these different interactive models we ask them to explain why we talk about global warming, what it means and what its connection is to the greenhouse gases. There is a 2’ video we can show, where a case is presented on how people are actually responsible for the deterioration of the greenhouse effect that leads to global warming (https://www.oercommons.org/courses/natural-cycle/view).Before closing the module we can revise every information presented and ask them to do a quiz to assess the knowledge gained during the whole procedure, found at http://www.sciencecourseware.org/eec/GlobalWarming/tutorials/greenhouse/ .There are two more resources that we can give as studying material for homework: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/question746.htm andhttps://scied.ucar.edu/longcontent/greenhouse-effect.          

In this lesson, students explore how human activities will continue to impact Antarctic ice, discuss human contributions to climate change, and investigate what we can do to stop/reverse these negative effects.

This module teaches students about ozone’s role in the atmosphere and explores authentic data to compare and contrast conditions that affect ground-level ozone values.

Students take virtual field trips to explore air quality research sites and investigate the causes, effects, and solutions to nitrogen deposition in Rocky Mountain National Park during this module.