From Global to City Air - 9th Grade Math Lessons

From Global to City Air - Math Lessons

Mathematics provides support in understanding parts per million, an important topic for understanding toxicity in human health. Other topics addressed in the math strand are: Cartesian coordinates, the metric system of measurement, biomagnification, population density, statistics, and data analysis.

Standards addressed by this unit are available on the individual lessons. To reach a lesson, just click on its title. To see connecting lessons in science, social studies, and language arts return to the ‘Cultures and Cycles’ unit page.

Each big idea is addressed by a learning cycle. At the completion of each big idea’s learning cycle students should be able to answer the corresponding question. At the end of the unit, the students will be able to apply their new scientific understanding to the Major Project where they provide a public service message that is checked in advance by local public health officials for accuracy.

Lesson Title & Description	Objective Students will:	Class period & week
Chernobyl 1 - Radiation Released Students will review the process of unit analysis to convert between units of radioactivity and will examine the radiation released during the 10 days the fire at the power plant raged.	1. Apply unit analysis to convert between Curies (Ci) and Becquerels (Bq), which are units of radiation used to express the amount of radiation released. 2. Use half-life data of radioactive nuclide material to demonstrate the use of an exponential function, specifically calculating the amount of material remaining after a given period of time. 3. Covert from units of radiation curies or becquerels to units of mass to determine the scale of radioactive material release during the Chernobyl disaster.	Week 1
Chernobyl 2 - Air Currents Students explore proportion and scale to model the extent of human health impact as a result of the Chernobyl Incident.	1. Construct a scale model to represent the geographic regions around Chernobyl that were affected by radioactive fallout. 2. Using data from the Chernobyl event to detail on their scale model which areas where most contaminated. 3. Model the effect of the winds on the distribution of radioactive materials over their scale representation.	Week 1
How Many People Live There? Students calculate the population density of a country as a whole and then calculate the population densities of larger cities within that country to demonstrate how population density figures can be misleading.	1. Calculate the population density of a country 2. Calculate the population density of large cities in that country 3. Create an appropriate graph to represent their data for that country	Week 2
Where Are We? Students use latitude and longitude as well as Cartesian coordinates with Mercator and Robinson Projections of the world to find locations or distances traveled.	1. Use a grid to apply the concept of latitude and longitude, or positive and negative Cartesian coordinates, to determine the position of an object in the room. 2. Determine the “quadrant” of the earth in which a specific location lies given the coordinates in degrees of latitude and longitude, or in positive or negative Cartesian coordinates, on a Mercator Projection of the World. 3. Find a specific location on a map given the coordinates in degrees of latitude and longitude, or in positive or negative Cartesian coordinates, on a Mercator Projection of the World.	Week 6

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PULSE is a project of the Community Outreach and Education Program of the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center and is funded by:

an NIH/NCRR award #16260-01A1

The Community Outreach and Education Program is part of the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center: an NIEHS Award

Supported by NIEHS grant # ES06694

Page Content: Rachel Hughes
Web Master: Travis Biazo