Global Balance
Topics: Climate Variability and Change
Source: Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, funded by NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency, in support of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Web Address: http://www.strategies.org/climate/GlobalBalance_May02.pdf
Grade Levels: 5-12
Learning Strategies: Teaching specific skills and knowledge through scientific inquiry; other(to be completed).
Frameworks Connections:
MathematicsScience and Technology/Engineering
- Technology/Engineering, Grades 6-8
2. Engineering Design
- Earth and Space Science, Grades 6-8
Heat Transfer in the Earth System
- Physical Sciences, Grades 6-8
Heat Energy
- Life Sciences, Grades 6-8
Living Things and Their Environment
- Earth and Space Science, Grades 9-10
1. Matter and Energy in the Earth System
- Technology/Engineering, Grades 9-10
1. Engineering Design
2. Construction Technologies
3. Energy and Power Technologies – Fluid Systems
- Number Sense and Operations
- Measurement
- Geometry
History and Social Sciences
- Main theme - “The development of scientific reasoning, technology, and formal education over time, and their effect on people’s health, standards of living, economic growth, government, religious beliefs, communal life, and the environment.”
Cost: Free
Description: This guide contains six student activities and experiments that “demonstrate the importance of ‘feedbacks’ and the balance of mass and energy in governing the response of any system to change. Energy balance and the factors that cause change (feedbacks) are the keys to understanding climate change, and therefore the keys to understanding the effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases on the environment.” The activities include detailed lesson plans.
The Global Balance guide is an excellent inquiry-based, multidisciplinary investigation of the effects of climate change.