I have not seen many laboratory activities that so effectively introduce and describe the realistic problems associated with global warming. Too often, global climate change is approached as a political issue and we lose sight of the science and research that has gone into the conclusions that have been made by scientists. We begin to replace pragmatic solutions to this problem with emotional rhetoric that does nothing to address the actual problem that we face. This lab activity, if coupled with an open and honest discussion that focuses on the scientific facts, will introduce students to this topic in a much more effective way. Students will learn through actually experiencing the issue rather than being taught with opinions.
There are questions, however, that this experiment raises (which, I feel, is the indicator of a good experiment). For example, how could this lab be enhanced to show the actual flooding of solid material ("land") instead of simply overflowing a bowl? Also, could the experiment be enhanced so that multiple trials, under different variables (temperatures), could be implemented so that students can see that the actual temperature of an environment plays a role as well?
Exactly, Mark! I was wondering if the lab could be enhanced to show the actual flooding of land. Based on the Law of Conservation of Matter, when the ice melts, it just takes up the space that it already had. Students need to see the difference of something that is frozen in liquid melting, as opposed to frozen on a solid and melting. After all, it is not the glaciers that concern me...it is Greenland!
ReplyDeleteThought provoking. This certainly is a topic to get lots of discussion going.
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