Life Cycle Assessment and Renewable Energy from and Indigenous Perspective (MS)
This lesson focuses on ways of reclaiming sustainability as an in Indigenous way of knowing and focuses on the western science concepts of energy from wastes and life cycle assessment. Students will explore how chemical engineering concepts allow for us to take the idea of converting food (traditional corn ethanol) into fuel and how we should be looking at converting waste materials into fuel as well. The first part of the lesson focuses on how engineering can be used to help make use of “waste” sources. This second part of the lesson introduces students to life cycle assessment. In this lesson, students will consider what raw materials and energy that went into our lunch. In addition, students are tasked with considering ways in which the these resoucrces can be reduced using indigenous knowledge.
objectives
• Students recognize how indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing are embedded within engineering.
• Students explain where the resources and energy we consume every day come from within in a life cycle assessment context.
• Students compare and contrast food production and food waste and develop creative solutions to using earth’s resources in a sustainable way.
Topic(s)
Chemical engineering, biofuels, food production and food waste, energy conversion, sustainability
type
Middle school lesson
6-8
Grade(s):
time needed
Two 50 minute sessions
author
Bethany Klemetsrud, Brittany Hagen
national next gen standards
• MS-LS1-7: Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.
• MS-PS1-2: Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.
• MS-PS1-6: Undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes.
north dakota standards
• MS-LS1-7: Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.
• MS-PS1-2: Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.
• MS-PS1-6: Undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes.