September 18, 2024 Filed in:
ArticlesMichelle Lee, Lisgar C. I.
michelle.lee@ocdsb.ca
Iain Braithwaite. John F. Ross C.V.I.
iainbraithwaite@ugdsb.on.ca
Milica Rakic, Essex DHS
mica@opusteno.com
Roberta Tevlin, Retired
roberta@tevlin.ca
Climate change may be the biggest problem that humanity has ever faced. The sooner that we deal with it, the more chance we have of succeeding. Physics teachers can play an important role in helping students understand the problem and its existing solutions, and help students feel empowered to take action. This article shows how you can teach about climate change, while reinforcing fundamental skills and concepts in the grade 11 physics curriculum. As usual, these OAPT resources are free.
Read More...Tags: Climate, Electricity, Energy, Forces, Kinematics
September 11, 2024 Filed in:
AnnouncementsRoberta Tevlin
roberta@tevlin.ca
Join us Thursday September 26th from 7:00 to 8:00 PM to learn about the many solutions to climate change, while engaged with other teachers in a role-playing game! By the end of the hour, you will see how climate change is very serious and very complicated —
but — it is also something that can be solved. You will leave energized and ready to try out this lesson with your classes the next day. This game would be good for SNC1W, SNC2D, SPH3U, SES4U, many geography courses, or anywhere else you want to discuss climate solutions.
This virtual Physics Hour is run by Roberta Tevlin, Milica Rakic, Iain Braithwaite, Michelle Lee, Tim Langford, Tom Eagan, and Felipe Almeida. Sign up for the event
here. Please share this opportunity with others who you think may be interested in joining. The Zoom meeting link will be sent out 48 hours prior to the event.
Read More...Tags: Climate, Destreamed, Energy, Professional Development
June 24, 2024 Filed in:
ArticlesRoberta Tevlin (retired physics teacher)
roberta@tevlin.caClimate change is an incredibly complex and serious problem. Many people avoid thinking about it because it seems so hopeless. This article is an introduction to something that will help you and your students see a way out of the mess. En-ROADS is a simulator of climate solutions from MIT. It is powered by over 20,000 simultaneous equations. It is a tool designed for business and government policy makers — but it can be used with grade-9 students. It is free and updated every couple of months.
Do yourself a favour and go to
https://www.climateinteractive.org/ and select EN-ROADS, the first large button available. Play around with the simulator for a bit and then come back to this article to learn how you can use it.
Read More...Tags: Climate
January 24, 2024 Filed in:
ArticlesShawn Brooks, UTS (University of Toronto Schools)
sbrooks@utschools.ca
With just a little coaxing, and a little help from their calculators, our grade 10 science students can use a simple energy-balance type of climate model to calculate the average temperature of a planet.
With this activity, your students will be able to calculate
what the earth’s average surface temperature would be if it didn’t have a greenhouse gas containing atmosphere.
This one-period activity can show your students how the numerical value of Earth’s albedo (0.3) is very meaningful to our planet’s temperature! If you are looking to inject a little more physics into your
Earth and Space Science: Climate Change unit, this might be the thing for you.
Read More...Tags: Climate, Energy
November 29, 2023 Filed in:
ArticlesMilica Rakic, Essex DHS
mica@opusteno.com
Roberta Tevlin, retired
roberta@tevlin.ca
In order to prevent the worst of climate change, the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) has to be reduced as fast as possible. The enormity of this task can look overwhelming and can lead to climate despair. However, we already have the technology we need and a great source of information about this can be found on the website of
Project Drawdown where they provide details of almost 100 solutions.
The goal of Project Drawdown is to show how we can ‘drawdown’ the emission of GHGs and then ‘drawdown’ the amount of these gases that are already in the air. This article shows how you can have your students examine 19 of these solutions which are involved in the production and use of electrical energy. This exercise is a good fit for the electricity unit in grade 9 science, the climate change unit in grade 10 science, the electricity unit in grade 11 university physics, and the energy transformation unit in grade 12 college physics.
Read More...Tags: Climate, Electricity, Energy, STEM
October 09, 2023 Filed in:
ArticlesMichelle Lee, Lisgar C. I.
michelle.lee@ocdsb.ca
Roberta Tevlin,Retired
roberta@tevlin.ca
Understanding the greenhouse effect is critical to understanding climate change and PhET has two excellent simulations that can help. This article describes how you can use these two simulations and a couple of supporting videos, to help your students develop a good understanding of the topic. This is most obviously relevant to the grade 10 Climate Change Unit. It is also relevant to grade 9 Astronomy and Ecosystems, Grade 10 Optics, and senior chemistry and physics.
Read More...Tags: Climate, Energy, Light, Waves and Sound
September 23, 2023 Filed in:
AnnouncementsDeveloped by James Ball, Iain Braithwaite, Michelle Lee, Robert Prior, Milica Rakic, Dale Simnett, and Roberta Tevlin.
Climate Change is moving fast and our window of opportunity to act decisively is shrinking. As science teachers, we can contribute to the solution by making sure that Climate Change is being taught, and taught well. We have been working this summer to develop ready-to-use resources to help you and your colleagues.
Read More...Tags: Climate
September 10, 2023 Filed in:
ReviewRobert Prior, ePublisher of OAPT Newsletter
science@robertprior.ca
After this summer, wildfires will remain front-page news, and not just in places that are under threat of burning. How can you do hands-on activities in class with something so destructive? And why would you want to?
The “why?” is an easy question to answer. Not only are wildfires topical, but our students have been affected by them: by smoke almost certainly, possibly even worse (depending on where they are). Certain public figures have been throwing around blame for the many wildfires and the failure of fire crews to immediately extinguish them. An understanding of how wildfires are fought, as well as the costs and risks of doing so, will help our students appreciate the reasons we have so many burning wildfires, and hopefully help them learn to distinguish between serious questions and political point-scoring.
That's where this simulation comes in. It's a solitaire tabletop game placing the player in the position of fire chief, responsible for containing wildfires for an entire season with a limited budget. The player deploys fire crews, aircraft, and other resources while the ignition and spread of fires is governed by rules based on the
Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System, which is backed by over 50 years of research.
Read More...Tags: Climate
September 02, 2023 Filed in:
ArticlesIain Braithwaite, John F. Ross C.V.I.
iainbraithwaite@ugdsb.on.ca
Roberta Tevlin, retired
roberta@tevlin.ca
Climate change can feel very threatening and at the same time it can feel very abstract. Demonstrations that use simple materials can help students understand the concepts better, and they provide a change of pace. We have gathered a
collection of nineteen demonstrations to help with the grade 10 Climate Change unit, both SNC2P and SNC2D.
Read More...Tags: Climate, Energy, Light
June 15, 2023 Filed in:
ArticlesRoberta Tevlin, Retired Teacher
roberta@tevlin.ca
Are you concerned about climate change? Do you wonder what you can do? A group of OAPT members have got together to help OAPT members to take action. We have some suggestions.
Read More...Tags: Climate
