Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery for students with Hearing Impairments
a collaboration of the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc., Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf, Barton College, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Interpreters, Inc.

For Teachers!

Forests,
Mining Carbon from the Air

Objectives: 

In the last few decades, computers and computer modeling have had a profound effect on the science that is being done. Many experiments, like growing forests, are so expensive and time consuming that direct experimentation is limited or impractical. Computer models take the formulas scientists have developed through field research and allow us to perform hundreds of simulated experiments. This lesson introduces the students to the new form of science called Computational Science. 

In this lesson the students will learn to "mine data" by looking at tables of numbers and rendering them into graphs in order to see trends and patterns. This is called visualization. This is the kind of skill your local weather person uses when he/she explains the weather maps that are computer generated.

Your students will also change the parameters that define how the forest is managed in order to recommend local and national policy. By working with professional models on current issues, the students will learn how scientists work and how science is done.   

National standards addressed:

Science

THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF ORGANISMS

-The atoms and molecules on the earth cycle among the living and nonliving components of the biosphere.

-Organisms both cooperate and compete in ecosystems. The interrelationships and interdependencies of these organisms may generate ecosystems that are stable for hundreds or thousands of years.

-Living organisms have the capacity to produce populations of infinite size, but environments and resources are finite. This fundamental tension has profound effects on the interactions between organisms.

-Human beings live within the world's ecosystems. Increasingly, humans modify ecosystems as a result of population growth, technology, and consumption. Human destruction of habitats through direct harvesting, pollution, atmospheric changes, and other factors is threatening current global stability, and if not addressed, ecosystems will be irreversibly affected.

MATTER, ENERGY, AND ORGANIZATION IN LIVING SYSTEMS

 -The distribution and abundance of organisms and populations in ecosystems are limited by the availability of matter and energy and the ability of the ecosystem to recycle materials.

-As matter and energy flows through different levels of organization of living systems--cells, organs, organisms, communities--and between living systems and the physical environment, chemical elements are recombined in different ways. Each recombination results in storage and dissipation of energy into the environment as heat. Matter and energy are conserved in each change

NATURAL RESOURCES

-Human populations use resources in the environment in order to maintain and improve their existence. Natural resources have been and will continue to be used to maintain human populations.

 -The earth does not have infinite resources; increasing human consumption places severe stress on the natural processes that renew some resources and it depletes those resources that cannot be renewed.

-Humans use many natural systems as resources. Natural systems have the capacity to reuse waste, but that capacity is limited. Natural systems can change to an extent that exceeds the limits of organisms to adapt naturally or humans to adapt technologically.

ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

-Natural ecosystems provide an array of basic processes that affect humans. Those processes include maintenance of the quality of the atmosphere, generation of soils, control of the hydrologic cycle, disposal of wastes, and recycling of nutrients. Humans are changing many of these basic processes, and the changes may be detrimental to humans.

-Materials from human societies affect both physical and chemical cycles of the earth.

-Many factors influence environmental quality. Factors that students might investigate include population growth, resource use, population distribution, over consumption, the capacity of technology to solve problems, poverty, the role of economic, political, and religious views, and different ways humans view the earth. 

National Science Standards were taken from: http://www.nap.edu/html/nses/html/

Mathematics

Formulate Questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer them

Understand the differences among various kinds of studies and which types of inferences can legitimately be drawn from each

Use Visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric modeling to solve problems

Understand Measurable Attributes of objects and the units, systems, and processes of measurement

National Mathematics Standards were taken from:

http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter7/index.htm

Developed by
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

Copyright © 1999-2001 by The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

This project is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation.