Ellie Behrens- Elementary Science Methods

Week 13: Local Climate Change ·        What did you do in lab? During lab we did a group project about climate change. My group researched temperature and how it’s related to climate change. I learned that locally, regionally, and globally the temperature has been rising over the most recent years. Since Iowa and the Midwest are very prominent for agriculture, the temperature changes cause more soil erosion and change in crop diversity. During the plant life presentation, I learned that this has a negative effect on Iowa because agriculture is a vital part of Iowa. There has been more precipitation and rainfall which negatively affects agriculture. During the precipitation presentation I learned that snowfall in Iowa has been decreasing over the past years. There has been more rain instead of snow. There are typically a few big snowstorms throughout the winter compared to many small snowstorms. ·        What was the...

  Week 12: Climate Change ·         Week 12: Climate Change ·        What did you do in lab? We discussed the Before the Flood video and what we learned from it. The main point of the video was to educate us about the effects of climate change and the current reality of it. One of the major issues is that it is hard to make policy changes because everyone needs to be on board with it. This is a challenge because it is a worldwide problem, so there are a lot of people involved. One question that I would like to know more about is if the predictions from the video have come true. Since this video was released in 2016, I would like to learn more about updates since the video was released. We also looked at data for rainfall in a specific region of Iowa. We used this data to predict if this affects goldfinches. We concluded that goldfinches are negatively affected by the changing climate in Iowa. Here is our data from the “Drake...

  Week 11: Weather ·        What did you do in lab? We discussed the water cycle in depth and all the different phases. The order of the water cycle is precipitation, evaporation, and condensation. We also talked about snow and how that occurs through sublimation. Weather is short term, and climate is long term. Before we could forecast weather with modern technology, people predicted the weather in different ways. They would keep detailed records, use patterns, and physical signs. Additionally, we made a list of terms related to weather and discussed their meaning. ·        What was the big question? The big question we discussed was: What is weather and what are related terms? ·        What did you do in Thursdays discussion? In Thursday’s discussion we took our assessment. ·        Read the online textbook chapter 2.    o  ...