Assignment:
Complex Disaster Event Analysis - How Knowing Physical Science Can Save Your Life!
Project Summary: You will choose an actual large-scale disaster or catastrophe scenario that illustrates all three units in our class and connects with all three of your Milestones. This can be a man-made or natural disaster. You will act as an environmental scientist, describing the cause of the event, the PHYSICS of it, the CHEMISTRY of it, the EARTH SCIENCE of it, and how it impacts local and/or global communities.
ProjectPurpose:Knowing physical science can save your life! With climate change and this Earth going through a geologically active period, there will be an increase in earthquakes, storms, disasters, and natural catastrophes. Understanding the science behind our world allows us to be better prepared, make plans, make policies, and allocate relief efforts to mitigate disasters. In this final project, you will be using information from all your milestones to analyze a complex catastrophe. In so doing, you will strengthen your knowledge base, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.
Project Topic:You can choose from the following categories of events to analyze. NOTE:your event does NOT need to be one of these listed, but it should be one that actually occurred - and it needs to be large-scale. This is so you can research it and gather facts, data, and accurate statistics.
• An asteroid strike (ex. Chicxulub contributing to the dinosaur extinction) - remember that it would set off earthquakes, tsunamis, weather events, etc.So you could talk about all of those.
• A supervolcano erupting (ex. Yellowstone, Toba, CampiFlegrei)
• A very intense monsoon or rain event causing catastrophic flooding
• An atomic bomb (ex. look up Hiroshima)
• A megastorm like in the movie The Day After Tomorrow
• You can even analyze the weather on another planet (ex. Venus, Jupiter)
Structure: Students will create a final PPT presentation that is 12-15 slides. Follow the Formatting Guide Provided in D2L.
Make sure your project adheres to the following criteria:
• Separate title and references pages (doesn't count in length)
• Length = NO LESS THAN 4 PAGES OR 12 SLIDES (not including title, refs, pics)!
• References = No LESS than 3 outside professional references (cited in APA style)
• Use your own words = No large quotes or cutting/pasting of text will be acceptable!
• PowerPoint = slide text should be at least 18 font size and presentation should be professional quality.