Week Topic Description

Participants will get a general introduction about the current state of the
climate. This will take the form of an interactive trivia game, like a
Kahoot! They will take a carbon footprint quiz
General
1 (http://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en) in order to determine about
Introduction
how much carbon they are emitting. Participants will be given a journal to
log different activities, such as transportation usage, plastic usage, waste
generated, and the length of time they leave their lights on.

This week will look specifically at the climate and the rising carbon
emissions. It will examine the effects of rising carbon emissions and the
overall change in the weather patterns. The interactive activity will be to
2 Climate Change simulate the effect of greenhouse gases on the temperature. To do this,
there will be two glass jars with a thermometer in them. One of the jars
will be covered, and they will both be set out in the sun or under a lamp,
and the temperature will be monitored [6].

Participants will learn about the various causes of climate change, ranging
from the energy generation to generating waste. Though a lot of large
scale sites generate a lot of carbon emissions, this lesson will also delve
Causes of Climate into how each individual contributes to climate change from the actions of
3
Change their day to day. This week, the point system will be introduced. For
making environmentally friendly choices, such as carpooling, or replacing
plastic bags with silicon reusable bags, participants will receive points,
which can be later redeemed for a prize.

This week, the class will go into the basics of alternative energy sources,
Alternative Energy such as nuclear, wind, solar, etc. This will allow people to understand the
4
Sources strides engineers are taking into providing alternative methods to generate
electricity. The class activity will be focused on making mini windmills.

Participants will learn about plastics and generating waste. They will learn
about how much plastic and waste is generated and how they can alter
5 Plastics and Waste
their actions to decrease the amount of waste and plastic they utilize. A
trivia game will be played to recap information gone over thus far.
 This class, a person that works specifically in a field with environmental
applications will be presenting. Presentations could range from energy to
waste to alternative methods of generating electricity. This will also focus
6 Guest Lecture!
on methods that scientists are pursuing to help lower carbon emissions.
This will allow participants to gain an understanding and see how many
people have a passion for this type of work.

This lesson will go over the basics of Direct Air Capture. DAC is a new
and growing technology with the goal of removing carbon dioxide from
the ambient air. This course will go over DAC, what the industry is
currently doing to support this research, and the future of this industry.
The activity for the day will be to demonstrate DAC with an analogy of a
sponge and running water. In this case, the running water acts as the air
7 Carbon Capture
stream that has carbon dioxide, and the sponge represents the capture
material being utilized. The running water will be flown over the sponge,
which will absorb water. In this case, the water that is absorbed into the
sponge is the carbon dioxide. As the water absorbs into the sponge, water
will also go through the sponge and spill out the other side, and this
represents the air that has less carbon dioxide in it.

This will wrap up the course by emphasizing what each individual can do
to lower their own carbon emissions to ultimately try to help curb climate
How you can help change. This presentation will also explain how each person can pass this
8
and Conclusion! information onto others to further spread environmentally conscious
information. There will also be a check-in with the points system and
prizes will be given out.