Week 12- Science Methods II

 What question are we investigating?

For the twelfth week of Science Methods II, we would begin to talk more about climate change and the importance to learn about it. This would be through talking about the movie Before the Flood and measuring precipitation in Iowa. In lecture we would take the Earth Quiz instead of talking more over climate change.

What did we do in lab to investigate this question?

The teacher started by asking “What is climate and weather and what did you learn from the movie Before the Flood”? This would be through talking in small groups over what we thought climate and weather are. It also would allow my small group to talk about if they thought climate and weather are the same thing or are there different factors into these two concepts. Another important portion talked about within my small group was how the movie talked about how the political party doesn’t allow society to see all of the different factors that are happening within climate change. This would allow my small group to talk about how we were surprised how the political party is able to do this and how the gas companies are a reason for doing this. 

What did we figure out?

Another main part that would be talked about in discussion is prescription in Iowa and allowing small groups to pick three different cities in different areas to see how prescription is happening like increasing or decreasing based on the data. My small group would discuss Spirit Lake, Storm Lake, and Sioux City to see if the prescription would increase or decrease in these three cities in Iowa. My small group would find that these three cities had a 45% increase in prescription in the last five years. This would allow my small group to see how climate change affects how the precipitation of rain is happening within these three cities in Iowa. It also would help when it came to the ending question which was “How do we know that Goldfinch is in danger in Iowa”? This would allow me to think about how this factor could impact the population of Goldfinch in Iowa through not having as much food and getting more diseases from this weather. 

What are new or remaining questions after the investigation? 

This discussion taught me about different factors that could affect climate change and seeing how something like prescription could impact other factors like the Goldfinch population in Iowa. That would allow me to see how it’s important to learn about climate change and how to teach this to students in my future classroom. Lastly, it would allow me to continue to think about different questions I want to learn through this climate change portion for Science Methods II. Some questions that I personally have are, “Do other countries have as much political impact from big corporations as the United States”, “What are some other countries' ideas over climate change”, and “Are there other people trying to make these big corporations accountable for what they are doing for climate change”?