360Storylines—Droughts, 1-Year Access

Product Details

A 360Storyline is a collection of experiments that together let students engage in science in an authentic manner through the use of relevant phenomena. Each experiment in a 360Storyline builds on things learned in the preceding experiments until students develop a final, working explanation or model of the phenomenon. Every lab in any 360Storyline is completely editable and supported by videos and simulations. 

Includes:

• Access to digital content for 1 year
• Lab supplies for each experiment for a single class of 30 students

Droughts
Lead students to a written understanding/working model of droughts and climate change. Earth is a complex system with many interconnected parts. The carbon cycle helps describe what happens to the carbon dioxide released by human activity. Excess carbon can result in increased temperatures, which can in turn affect rainfall levels and result in drought. The ability of carbon dioxide to act as a greenhouse gas can be used either as an introduction to, or as a case study for, infrared spectroscopy.

What Students Do

Lab 1—Carbon Dioxide and Its Role in Climate
Students carry out an investigation to determine the effect of an increased carbon dioxide concentration on temperature within a closed system.

Lab 2—How Nature Records Changes in Climate
Students examine tree rings in order to make observations relating to changing rates of growth.

Lab 3—Human Activity and Carbon Emissions
Students investigate the three main sources of anthropogenic carbon emissions: combustion, land use/deforestation and cement production. Students develop a model to describe the cycling of carbon among the hydrosphere, biosphere, geosphere and atmosphere.

Lab 4—Model Climate Change with Melting Ice
Students observe temperature change as ice and room temperature water are added to near boiling water. This demonstrates the latent heat of ice melting and how it affects the overall temperature of the ocean.

Lab 5—Climate Change and Keeping Cool
Students examine different methods to “escape the heat,” first in a dry environment and then in a humid one.

Lab 6—Solar Cell Technology
Switching to greener sources of energy could help combat climate change. Students construct their own dye-sensitized solar cells using blackberry juice as sensitizer.

Lab 7—Climate Change and the Carbon Cycle
Students design an experiment to confirm that both carbon dioxide dissolution in water and plant photosynthesis contribute to capturing and converting atmospheric CO₂.

About 360Storylines

A 360Storyline is a collection of experiments that together let students engage in science in an authentic manner through the use of relevant phenomena. Each experiment in a 360Storyline builds on things learned in the preceding experiments until students develop a final, working explanation or model of the phenomenon. Every lab in any 360Storyline is completely editable and supported by videos and simulations. 

Students must drive the learning forward by developing procedures and asking questions. Each storyline is supported by editable documents that force students to think about how the data they collect relate to an individual experiment’s investigative phenomenon and how the data they collect in a series of labs relate to a broader, anchoring phenomenon.