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What to expect
We all have an important role to play in preserving the environment by living in a sustainable way. Every person has an impact, but how significant is one person’s impact? In this activity, you will explore the impact that you and your family have on the planet. Then we will use the micro:bit to play a game of sustainability charades where you can help create the game!
Connections
In this activity, we are going to think about our own impact on the environment. This is our first exploration of the topic of sustainability. This will help us to understand other topics related to sustainability that we will explore later. First: what is a carbon footprint?
Designing Solutions to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of Industry
People have a carbon foot that describes their impact on the environment, but businesses have a carbon footprint too. New businesses are emerging all the time with solutions to help us reduce our carbon footprint.
Materials
Computer or tablet
Micro:bit
Carbon footprint research sheet
Instructions
Today’s activity has two parts. In the first part, you will have two options to explore your carbon footprint. Your carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases, as well as water vapor) that are generated by your daily activities. In the second part of today’s activity, you will continue learning about the micro:bit by playing a game of sustainability-related micro:bit charades.
Part I-Option 1
If you were able to complete your carbon footprint data sheet, open up the Google doc or have it available for you to reference.
2. Go to the Carbon Footprint Calculator provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Most of the questions on the website should match the questions on your data sheet.
3. Use your sheet to fill in the blanks on all questions (if you don’t know the answers to some of your questions, you can use our Sample Data)
4. Compare your footprint to the national average. Does your household fall above or below the average? What could you do to bring down your emissions? You can revisit the sections where you can increase the savings and compare the new results with the previous one (optional).
Part I-Option 2
If you don't have a carbon footprint already calculated, use the ecological footprint tool to estimate how many earths it would take to sustain your lifestyle.
2. Click past the newsletter signup ("Skip to view my results"), and view the number of earths it would take if everyone lived just as you do. Does this number surprise you?
Take a look at what your green actions are equivalent to: in gallons of gas, trees planted, and tons of recycled waste. Use this to think about what actions you are already taking in reducing your emissions, and what you could do to bring them down more.
Part II: Micro:bit Sustainability Charades
2. Click "Edit" or “Edit Code” in the top right of your screen.
3. In this code block, there are empty “ ” bubbles that you can fill with sustainability-related or renewable energy-related terms that you know (If you’d like to add even more, click the plus symbol at the bottom of this block). Ideas: carbon dioxide, electric vehicles, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc.
4. Now connect your micro:bit to the computer with the USB cable, download the code, and test it with your micro:bit just like in Activity 1.1. If you need help, here are micro:bit instructions to download code.
How to play micro:bit Sustainability Charades
How to play micro:bit Sustainability Charades
When you download the program, the game will start and a 30 second timer will start to count down!
Place the micro:bit on your forehead with the LEDs facing out.
It is your partner’s job to act out the word that pops up on your forehead without speaking.
Your job is to correctly guess the sustainability term or concept that they are acting out.
If you guess the word correctly, look down towards the floor with the micro:bit on your forehead.
If you give up on that word, look up towards the ceiling with the micro:bit on your forehead.
At the end of 30 seconds, your score will display on the micro:bit’s screen.
The person with the most words guessed correctly wins!
Think about it
In today’s activity, we explored the effect that we each individually have on the environment by calculating our carbon footprint. Then, we continued gaining experience using the micro:bit by playing an interactive game of Sustainability Charades.
When you calculated your carbon footprint, what surprised you?
What kinds of things would reduce your carbon footprint?
If someone across the world has a high carbon footprint, does that affect you? If you have a high carbon footprint, does that affect anyone else?
When you played micro:bit “Sustainability Charades,” what surprised you?
Take another look at the code for the Sustainability Charades program. What if you wanted to add another option to the game? What would you need to change in the code to add another option?
Feedback Link
How did you feel about this activity? Change the emoji to show your feelings.
Next Time
Next time, we are going to investigate a particular type of energy: thermal energy, a.k.a. heat. We will use infrared laser thermometers and infrared cameras to investigate the temperature of everyday objects and spaces around your school.
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