Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Analyzing and Interpreting Data
Crosscutting Concepts
Systems and System Models
Knowledge
Students know:
- National and global patterns of energy consumption and production.
- State and federal regulations for mining and reclamation of mined land, and the environmental consequences of mining.
- Factors that influence the value of a fuel.
- The advantages and disadvantages of the following: fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and alternative energies.
- The uses of mineral resources as well as how they are formed.
- The components of a cost-benefit of ratio.
- The basic economic principle of supply and demand.
- When evaluating solutions, it is important to consider cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as cultural, social, and environmental impacts
Skills
Students are able to:
- Evaluate the evidence for each design solutions, including societal needs for the energy or mineral resource, the cost of extracting or developing the energy reserve or mineral resource, the costs and benefits of the given design solutions, and the feasibility, costs, and benefits of recycling or reusing the mineral resource.
- Use logical arguments, based on empirical evidence, evaluation of the design solutions, costs and benefits (both economical and environmental), and scientific ideas, to support one design over the other.
Understanding
Students understand that:
- All forms of energy production and other resource extraction have associated economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical costs and risks as well as benefits. New technologies and social regulations can change the balance of these factors.
- Scientific knowledge indicates what can happen in natural systems - not what should happen. The latter involves ethics, values, and human decisions about the use of knowledge.
- Modern civilization depends on major technological systems. These systems are continuously modified to increase benefits while decreasing costs and risks.
- New technologies can have significant impacts on society and the environment, including some that were not anticipated.
- Analysis of cost-benefit ratios is an essential component to making decisions regarding the use of technology.
Vocabulary
- mineral resources — ore mineral, metal, non-metal, subsurface mining, surface mining, placer deposit, smelting, subsidence, reclamation
- hydrothermal solutions
- solar evaporation
- sustainability
- fossil fuels
- electric generator
- petroleum
- natural gas
- fracking
- oil reserves
- nuclear energy
- nuclear fusion
- renewable energy
- nonrenewable energy
- active solar heating
- biomass fuel
- geothermal energy
- energy efficiency
- energy conservation
- ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC)
- fuel cell
- hybrid
- biodegradable
- source reduction
- compost
- economics
- gross national product
- no till farming
- land use planning
