What Determines the Climate? - Introduction
Lesson
Unit Essential Question How do we know human activity is impacting climate systems and what can we do about it? Objectives Students will be able to: Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century. (MS-ESS3-5) Students will: Explore qualitative and quantitative data about the atmospheres of Mars, Earth, and Venus as an introduction to the Goldilocks Principle and the greenhouse effect. Conduct an experiment to test the change in temperature of the air of system in a closed container (a model greenhouse) and an open container. Compare and contrast how an actual greenhouse and the Earth’s greenhouse effect are similar and different. Make a conclusion about the ability of gases to absorb energy. Graph climate data for a series of years and analyze what the data shows. Attribution Developed by SCALE at Stanford University and San Francisco Unified School District Science Department.