Greenhouse Effect - Investigating Global Warming

• This lesson plan includes detailed directions for an experiment on the effect of carbon dioxide on Earth's atmosphere, information on the greenhouse effect, and conclusion questions for students. 
• Students will create three environments, hypothesize which environment will result in the greatest temperature change, collect data using temperature probes and computer graphing software, analyze the data for each environment, and draw conclusions about the greenhouse effect. 

Positives 

• In the experiment, students will record the temperatures in three beaker environments, a control group environment with no plastic wrap, an environment with plastic wrap, and an environment with plastic wrap and increased carbon dioxide levels.
• The resource includes two data tables for students to record temperature data and a worksheet with analysis and conclusion questions.
• The lesson plan provides a clear outline of the objective, background reading, instructions for students, and an answer key for the conclusion questions.

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should have a basic understanding of the Earth's atmosphere, global warming, and greenhouse gases.
• Students will need access to the Logger Pro program or similar digital data collection program and a data collection device for digital data collection. Students should be familiar with Logger Pro before they begin the experiment.

Differentiation 

• Students who are unfamiliar with automatic data collection could collect the data manually. 
• Science classes could discuss the following follow-up questions:
  • What would happen if the Earth had no atmosphere?
  • What would happen if there were no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
  • What are some ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
• Other resources on this topic include this Khan Academy video on the greenhouse effect, this interactive simulation of the greenhouse effect, and this lesson on the chemistry of the greenhouse effect.