P7 Science Goes off with a Bang

This week, P7 have investigated the role of CO2 and our oceans in Global Warming.

As part of our topic, we have been exploring The UN’s 17 Global Goals for Sustainability. In this lesson we thought about Goals 12, 13, 14 and 15.

First, we learned what carbon dioxide is, where it comes from and the effect it has on our Earth’s temperature. This video will show you more.

We made our own CO2 molecules out of marshmallows.

We learned that carbon dioxide is a Greenhouse Gas and the more CO2 in our atmosphere, the warmer Earth gets.

We learned that carbon dioxide levels have increased greatly in the past 150 years. But we were surprised that the Earth’s temperature has only increased by about 1 degree. We learned that our oceans absorb a lot of this extra heat and we proved this with a balloon investigation.

We had 3 balloons that represented Earth; one with no water, one with a little water and one with more water. When we applied heat from a lighter, the balloon with no water burst instantly. The one with a little water took a few seconds and the one with more water took a lot longer to burst. This shows that water absorbs heat, but, just like the final balloon eventually burst, our oceans will not be able to slow down global warming forever.

Click on the links below to see a video and the balloon bursting in slow motion (Mrs Gray obviously got a scare)…

Final Balloon Video

Slow Motion Bursting