Science II Blog

The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did.   In lab, we discussed more about climate change. We reviewed and shared our elder interviews. We also looked at the  CO2 jars. Then we watched The Science of Climate Change Video. One thing that was discussed in the video was how 2020 had the most amount of wildfires. This occurred because the year also had the most amount of droughts. They stated in the video that this wasn't an issue 20-30 years ago.  Another thing we discussed is how the Earth has warmed by 1 degree since the 1800s. This is because the atmosphere has been changing the temperature and affecting climate change. Likewise, CO2, methane, and water vapors stay in the atmosphere and cause the greenhouse effect . In 1958 the CO2 levels were 315  per million. The CO2 does naturally move up and down with the season, however until the industrial era it had never gone past 300. Now in 2023, the CO2 levels are 422 parts per million. This i...

  The big question addressed in lab, and a description of what you did. In lab, we reviewed more on  "Before the Flood" and then talked about the importance of students being able to read graphs. We also talked about coupled inquiry. Climate change seems more of an issue for island people because they are surrounded by water. One way climate change affects them is because it causes thermal expansion in sea levels which means the water rises. We, Iowans, are surrounded by land so people here pretend climate change is not an issue. Another misconception is that climate and weather are the same thing, but this is untrue. Weather is the current temperature and conditions, climate is 30 years worth of weather. One cool fact about climate change though is that Iowa City is in the top 100 cities for making efforts to prevent climate change. Moreover, coupled inquiry is important because we want our students to ask questions and we want them to learn how to investigate their inquirie...