Science

Students take on the roles of systems engineers for Ergstown, a fictional town that experiences frequent blackouts, and explore the reasons why an electrical system can fail. Students apply what they learn to choosing new energy sources and energy converters for the town, and then they prepare arguments for why their design choices will make the town’s electrical system more reliable.

Working as conservation biologists, students figure out why a population of Tokay geckos has decreased since the installation of new highway lights in the rainforest. Students use their understanding of vision, light, and information processing to figure out why an increase in light in the geckos’ habitat is affecting the population. Then students turn their attention to humans by designing their own investigations in order to learn more about how our senses help us survive.

Playing the role of geologist, students help the director of Desert Rocks National Park explain how and when a particular fossil formed and how it came to be in its current location. Students figure out what the environment of the park was like in the past and why it has so many visible rock layers.

Students take on the roles of marine scientists investigating how bottlenose dolphin mothers and their calves in the fictional Blue Bay National Park use patterns of sound to communicate across distances, which serves as the anchor phenomenon for this unit.