Week 13 - Melting Glaciers

Week 13 - Melting Ice


News/Introduction

For this week in Science Methods, we explored the lesson plan from last week that we were asked to critique. This was a nice way to explore the idea of climate change from a conceptual level. Being able to think about what we did, and how relevant this was to our current understanding of teaching science. One such think I enjoyed about the lesson was that this helped me engage with the material because of its relevancy. Because we looked at an actual issue in our communities, this helped me take a deeper look into the science of climate change. This lab experience helped me reflect on how I want to help my students learn science. 

We also discussed teaching and learning in academia. A current problem is how we have moved into this methodology of "teaching to the test," rather than teaching for understanding. As a result, we lag behind our peers. If we were to take approaches like the SWH Approach, we can narrow the gap. This helps us create a more equitable classroom.

Our driving question for this lab experience was how climate change affects the sea levels. At the time, my current understanding was that all melting ice rises the sea level drastically. This is the foundation for this lab. My group created a simulated environment where we had ocean ice and continental ice. After a period of time, we looked at which melting ice has the most impact on sea levels. We also looked at what happens when water heats up, which is an effect from the heating of the oceans. What we learned is that when water heats up, it also expands in a process called thermal expansion.

    

New Discoveries

My misconceptions on melting ice changed during this lab. I had prior knowledge of the sea level not rising due to displacement, but I was more surprised to see that continental ice drastically affects the sea level more than sea ice. Additionally, I discovered that as water heats up, it expands. This also adds to the rising sea levels. This heating up of the ocean also leads to a feedback look of warmer water leads to faster ice melting.

Connections

What does this all mean? Rising sea levels can cause drastic effects around the world. However the rising global temperatures is what caused us to sign the Paris Climate Accord (adopted 12/12/2021). However, as discussed on an earlier post, climate change has gotten very political. And despite being the first to sign the accord (under Obama), the Trump Administration wanted out. The Biden Administration has made attempts to resign. Something that I found surprising was that larger tech companies AND OIL COMPANIES wanting Trump to honor the agreement. But this is something that absolutely needs to be taken seriously because entire areas of the world are slowly being covered with water.

The Future

We will be taking the week off from lab and lecture next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, but we will still need to conduct interviews with elders about the topic of cllimate change.

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