Activity 7: Inquiring Further
Environmental models
Students’ procedures on creating an environmental model to research how acid rain affects an ecosystem will vary. The variation will be on the kinds of organisms that the students will use; the amount of water and vinegar; and the complexity of the ecocolumn to be built.
Setting up an ecocolumn is a very important modeling activity.
We strongly recommend that this Inquiring Further be done by the class.
A month before this activity, you can start telling the students to bring
2-liter soda bottles. This will give you enough time to collect as many
bottles as you can.
Discuss with the students that they have to figure out what would indicate
the effect of the acid rain. Will this be the death of the organisms? Will this
be the wilting of the plants? Tell them that these indicators are the dependent variables. Explain to them that the acid rain is what is causing the change that
is shown by the indicators. The acid rain is the independent variable.
The students can make “windows” on the side of the plastic bottle. They can
be holes through which acidity indicators like pH papers can be put through.
The caps on the bottles can also be pierced with holes to allow fluids to be introduced into the ecocolumn.
A possible source of sulfur oxide could be the smoke after blowing out
a burning matchstick. This could also be introduced into the ecocolumn
through the “window.” |