If we keep living how we are now, the world may not have a future. Not because of aliens, artificial intelligence, or an evil super villain, but from something far more subtle. Something that is slowly creeping in, quietly but relentlessly. Something that we are responsible for… Carbon Dioxide.

We recently finished a project called ChemHistory where we spent many classes reserching, learning, and creating, all while trying to answer the driving question, what impacts do elements and compounds have on history and modern day society?

Carbon Dioxide – Element Art

I made an art piece to symbolize carbon dioxide and what it is doing to our environment. This is not any old art peice, it wasn’t made out of paint or markers, but a chemical called cyanotype. Cyanotype is a light sensitive chemical, when it is coated on a surface (I used a piece of fabric), it reacts and turns blue. I created a stencil of what i wanted to be projected on my fabric, I then coated the fabric with cyanotype in a itchy back room.Then, I put my stencil on it, left it in the sun, and in a matter of minutes it was changing color. 

My Answer to the Driving Question

Carbon dioxide has a huge impact on our society today. Carbon Dioxide is a green house gas, it traps heat in the earths atmosphere. When too much of it builds up, it creates a blanket around earth that doesn’t let heat out. The amount of carbon dioxide is rapidly increasing because of our insensitive use of gas, coal, oil, etc. Earth is getting too hot, which is causing major problems in our environment. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, air quality is declining, and animals are losing their homes. If we don’t act soon, and start reducing our usage of fossil fuels, Earth will be no longer a safe place to live. It’s not too late, but we have to make a change.

How I Got There

Learning

Within this project I did a lot of learning. I learned about the periodic table where I was taught what it is, what elements are a why it is organized the at it is. I learned what a Bohr  and Lewis diagram is, why they are useful and how to draw them. I then learned about compounds and how elements combine to produce them. I then went through the struggling process of of trying to figure out/memorize ionic bonds and their formulas. Learning all of these things helped me answer the driving question because it taught me what an element and a compound is.

Ionic Compounds Quiz

Something that helped me answer the driving question and expand my knowlage on ionic compounds is the quiz I did on them. This is probably the first quiz i have ever done in PLP, and it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I was educated very well and thoroughly before taking this quiz that It was a breeze. This quiz gave you many formulas of ionic compounds and we had to find the names of them, and then it gave you names in which you had to find formulas of.

F.A.I.L (First attempts in learning)

Art Gallery 

After we finished our artwork and paragraph we hosted an art gallery for the school. If I were to do anything different in this project, I would change how I acted during the art gallery. I would say public speaking is a strong suit of mine, but during this allergy I was jot enthusiastic at all. When people came by I only gave them a short boring description. Next time, I would be more prepared and use the gallery as a way to spread word about climate change and inspire people