As you review the fundamentals of both the natural and human enhanced greenhouse
effect, The importance of the element carbon to this process becomes very clear.
For students it may be helpful to utilize a role playing simulation to help them
more fully understand how and why carbon moves around the planet.
In this simulation, students will role play becoming an atom of carbon on
a journey throughout the carbon cycle.
Since carbon atoms move by chance, we will use dice to determine the random way they
move throughout the cycle following the pathways that carbon can take,
moving from one location to another.
The simulation will be using comes from a version developed by
the Peggy Notebaert nature.
Now let's review the components of the simulation so we all understand the pieces
and parts that are involved in having students take this carbon cycle journey.
In the room, you'll have set up stations where the students can find the locations
where carbon can be found on the planet.
These will be designated by cards created with the title of the location.
Hopefully some kind of pictorial or photographic graphic to help them see more
dramatically where the carbon can be found.
At each of these stations, there will also be individual die that are utilized for
each station to show the students as they toss these die where they go next and
their carbon cycle journey.
So each dye is unique to the particular location or
station where the carbon can be found because each pathway is unique.
Students will also need data sheets to help them record their journey as they
take this carbon cycle pathway around the planet and they will just simply record
the locations where carbon can be found as they go from station to station.
It's important to understand how carbon can be found at these different locations,
and what those pathways are for it to move to other locations on the planet.
So let's just spend a couple minutes just reviewing how carbon is
found in these different locations and
how it's able to move in various ways to other parts of the planet.
First of all carbon Of course can be found in the atmosphere.
Carbon is paired with two atoms of oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide.
It can be made in the atmosphere become part of plants through photosynthesis,
or dissolved in ocean waters.
Carbon can be found in plants and animals.
Carbon is part of a chain in a tree trunk.
sugar in a fruit or in the muscle of an animal.
It can be respired by plant or
animals into the atmosphere will become part of the soil as the organism decays.
Carbon can be found in the soil Carbon enters soil as part of the chain.
In plant materials such as a fallen leaf, it can remain in the soil be
carried downstream to the ocean, develop into a fossil fuel or
be released into the atmosphere as part of the decaying process.
Carbon can also be found in the surface ocean Carbon is dissolved in
the surface of the ocean.
It can remain in the ocean, be released into the atmosphere, and carried deeper
into the ocean by currents, or become part of marine life through photosynthesis.
Carbon is also found in the deep ocean.
Carbon is dissolved in the deeper waters of the ocean.
It can remain in the deep ocean, settle to the bottom of
the ocean as sediment or move to the ocean surface by currents.
The way life also contains carbon.
Carbon is part of a chain algae or a marine animal.
It can be excelled, exhaled by marine life.
To return to the surface of the ocean or
become part of the deep ocean when the marine life dies.
Ocean sediments can also hold a large amount of carbon.
Carbon is part of the material that settles to the bottom of the ocean and
will become sedimentary rock.
It can either become a fossil fuel after 10 million years.
Or be released into the atmosphere when a volcano erupts, releasing carbon dioxide.
And finally carbon can be found in fossil fuels.
Carbon is part of the chain in oil, coal or natural gas.
It can remain as a fossil fuel or
be released to the atmosphere after it's been burned for human use.
Now that we understand all the components of the simulation,
we'll get ready to actually role play this game.
Now let's step through how students actually complete the simulation.
In the room you'll have setup stations where the carbon can be found
on with the associated dye,
which helped the students know how to journey from location to location.
Students will take their data sheets, and
pick a location of their choice to begin, they will write the name of that first
location on the top line on their data sheet under the, first column.
Then on a cue from the teacher and students will begin to toss this dice,
gently to see where they should go next on their journey.
The die are specific to each location so
make sure they'll stay at those initial stations.
When students see where they should journey to, they will physically move to
that next location and right that second location on their data sheet.
You will note and should explain to the students ahead of time many of them die,
there is a command to stay at that station.
As you know, carbon has the ability to be trapped or captured in a particular place
on the carbon cycle, for often times long periods of time.
And so this is a very real aspect of the actual nature-driven carbon cycle Cycle.
If students get the state command on their die, they simply write that same location
on the data sheet again, a second, third, fourth, however many times they need to.
That is just the same as having made a journey to a new location after
the students have completed 10 other rounds of this first part of simulations
We will sit down and we will prepare for the second round.I now demonstrate
how this actual process will work.So I have chosen to start at the plan and
animal station.And so I have written what students will do that location down
in the first line of my duty sheets.I simply toss the dice oops,toss the dice.
And it tells me that my next step should be atmosphere.
So before I even move, I'm going to go ahead and write atmosphere down.
So I don't get a little ahead of myself and forget to record that.
So atmosphere is my next stop.
And as we go to atmosphere, I will toss the die awesome course.
And it actually gives me the state command stay at atmosphere So
I will write atmosphere down again,
because I'm trapped there in the atmosphere for various reasons.
And so toss the die again for my fourth round.
And it tells me the journey back to plant and animal,
smell right plant and animal and as students are doing this.
It's important for them to kind of review in their minds, that process we talked
about about how carbon is physically moving on those pathways.
So you might ask them to kind of think about that as they're becoming that Arvin
carbon atom, moving through the cycle.
Let's stop there.
Now that you have an idea of how the process works.
We're now ready to begin round two.
But first, you might need to make a slight change in the game components.
And a historic event has occurred,
which is change the nationally driven carbon cycle.
We'll discuss that more after we collect our data.
But for now, we need to remove and swap out four of the dye for
dice which reflect a change in the process of the carbon cycle as it connects
to this historic event.
So we're going to actually swap out our atmosphere dye for a different one.
We're going to swap out our soil dye for the new one,
our ocean sediments dye, and our fossil fuel dye.
This has been completed, we are ready to start round two.
So the second round should go fairly smoothly because students
now know what to do.
They'll start at the same location they started in round one.
So I began at plants and animals.
So I put that down in my data sheet in the second column as
my first step in the carbon cycle.
Same process, we'll toss the die and see where I go this time.
I go to atmosphere.
So I write atmosphere down in the second line of my data sheet and
physically drained to that next location.
Atmosphere, I will toss and I get stay at atmosphere.
To hear, so we'll put that down as a repeat.
Toss again.
And I get stay at atmosphere.
Let's do it one more time.
See if I can leave the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, for my first my fifth step, I am still at atmosphere will stop there.
Okay, we've completed the simulation with our class.
And now it's time to look at the information that was gathered and
to discuss its meaning.
So the students will take their individual data sheets where they recorded their
journeys in the two rounds of that game.
And they'll notice that there's a table at the bottom of the data sheet.
Now take time to individually document how many times they stopped at each location
and the carbon cycle journey for each of those team rats.
So discussion can take place about how they had different results as individuals,
as they made that turning.
This rich discussions that can be had as we look at that.
But then we want to look as a class more closely at the larger data set, and try
to understand picture idea what's really important as we see the carbon cycle
news or carbon moves through the earth, and you see humans effects on that cycle.
So we can take the information that the students gathered, And
create a class set of data and then look specifically at two areas where we
can see some changes occurring in the carbon abundance over time.
So we're gonna look at atmosphere and fossil fuels.
So we'll capture the number of times students landed in atmosphere location.
The first round which we're going to call the pre 1700, round in our second round,
which we'll call pull 1700.
And we'll do the same for fossil fuels.
Now you might be thinking, well, we have the two rounds and
we're kind of representing them in these time periods.
What is the key to understanding why that particular time period caused this very
dramatic change?
And if you think carefully about it it's of course the Industrial Revolution.
So about that time period in our history humans began to find a rich source of
energy possibility in utilizing fossil fuels, and
began to remove fossil fuels and burn them for energy.
Thus creating some very dramatic differences in the abundance of carbon In
the atmosphere, and also the abundance of carbon in its
traditional deep storage areas in the earth.
So once we've gathered those numbers from the students as a whole, we can represent
this information graphically by creating some simple bar charts as we have here.
And so we can look at atmosphere over time pre and post 1700 and
the fossil fuel abundance pre and post 1700.
And this is a great visual for
the students to see the change based on that historic moment
in the humans history and our anthropogenic effects on the carbon cycle.
So we hope by stepping you through the simulation,
you can see that it's very dramatically illustrates how fossil fuels,
once serving as a sink of carbon source storage, have increasingly
been released starting with the industrial revolution in the 1700s.
And they have now become a source of carbon.
Goofing off primarily in our oceans and our atmosphere.