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Materials provided can vary in complexity to challenge more motivated students.
Each team should have a different product for opportunities to compare and contrast products within the classroom.
Prepare to spend more than an hour and possibly cover this over multiple days to explore more.
If resources are limited, instructors could look at packaging - e.g. look at a box of crackers; or put a call out to students or others to go to thrift stores, garage sales, or bring in their own broken equipment.
The activity requires having several old/broken metal and plastic products for students to examine and possibly take apart, depending on how the instructor chooses to structure the lesson. Examples from the resource: a broken CD player, old VCR player, a Mr. Coffee machine, or a toy. Note (from the resource): More complex products take longer to analyze than simple products, such as staplers, hair brushes, mechanical pencils or tape dispensers, and are more interesting, too! Disassembling the products would also require screwdrivers and similar tools in appropriate sizes/styles.
This is a hands-on assessment of a manufactured product's life cycle and its impact on the environment, including the product's component materials, manufacturing process, lifetime, and the ability to recycle components once its useful life is over.
Two discussions allow a more in-depth exploration of the principles behind life cycle assessments, and how products can be designed differently to meet different needs.
Comments from expert scientist:
Scientific strengths: Generally speaking, this resource allows students to personally weigh the tradeoffs between global warming mitigation measures and industrial expansion using Catan, an engaging boardgame. This resource highlights how individual and group development sacrifices could benefit the earth from a global warming perspective, and, in contrast, how individual and group rejection of climate policy could lead to climate disasters.
Scientific concerns: This resource may have "doomsday" undertones and may invoke frustration among students. For this reason when this resource is used in a classroom setting I think it will be important to acknowledge this feeling and encourage students to have these difficult conversations.
Students work in teams of two to assess an engineered product, such as a toaster, for environmental impact and ability to recycle materials. Re-design, creative thinking and team work is encouraged.
This is a hands-on, small group activity with whole-class discussions before and after the activity.
Student groups will have a worksheet to follow as they complete the life cycle assessment.
Learning outcomes are clearly stated and the activity is explicitly linked to specific sections of the Next Generation Science Standards, International Techonology and Engineering Educators Association standards, and various state standards.
There are clear and useful suggestions for scaling the activity for different grade levels and time blocks.
If instructors choose to have the students disassemble the products, some student familiarity with screwdrivers and basic tool use would be helpful.
This activity would engage kinesthetic, visual and logical/mathematical learning styles.
The activity includes time to introduce the material, have a pre-assessment class discussion, perform the assessment, and have a post-assessment class discussion and debrief.
The activity itself would not require much preparation time from the instructor; gathering enough old/broken/disposable manufactured goods for all of the groups to take part in the activity would likely be the most time-consuming part.
