Carbonator in Schools

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Carbonator can be used in schools for inquiry based, blended or independent learning.

Science inquiry involves identifying and posing questions. Carbonator is a useful tool to practice constructing questions and hypotheses, and proposing possible outcomes in order to plan, conduct and reflect on scientific investigations.

• Hypothesis testing and scenario based learning: run your scenarios to see how the planet reacts
• Learn what a model is and how simple models like Carbonator can tell us important information about the real world
• Hands on learning around how and why greenhouse gases, aerosols and other factors affect the climate system
• Learn how to translate physical understanding to mathematics to computer code using our simplified Carbonator model in Excel
• Export data to perform data analysis and model-observation comparisons (the app can overlay HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and GISTEMP observations, and CMIP6 model ranges)

We encourage teachers and students to use the model for their own inquiry questions.

A good research question:

• has multiple possible answers and should not be easily answered from, say, a web search;
• is not biased in terminology or position;
• is simple and manageable;
• is focused and clear.

To get started try our lesson plans:

Worksheet: Influence of Human Activities on changes to climate

Worksheet: Mitigation Strategies

Or start with one of the built-in teaching experiments (CO₂ pulse, mega volcano, geoengineering failure, and more).

Online resources

Australian Academy of Sciences - Science of Climate Change document:
https://www.science.org.au/climatechange

How does the climate system work? UK Met Office video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrPS2HiYVp8

Why do we have different seasons? California Academy of Sciences video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgHmqv_-UbQ

Milankovitch cycles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIpi_r398ro
https://youtu.be/dqk3FhtduYc

What is albedo?
https://youtu.be/uWZEvZ118DM

NASA video on dust and sea salt aerosols:
https://youtu.be/oRsY_UviBPE

Scattering concepts:
https://youtu.be/0b1fqodmZJ0

Behaviour of greenhouse gases:
https://youtu.be/sTvqIijqvTg

Greenhouse effect explainer: Gab Abramowitz, UNSW Sydney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MTDWbT0P90
https://youtu.be/L2mxR7FBTk4

Interactive video map showing "A Year in the Life of the World's CO2":
https://co2.digitalcartography.org/

Up to date material on the global carbon budget:
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/index.htm