SCU’s Climate Change Challenge

Dr. Douglas Tait recently presented at SCU’s inaugural Climate Change Challenge. Schools throughout the district attended with students from early primary to late high school. Douglas gave a short talk on the causes of climate change and the equipment we use to measure greenhouse gas concentrationand where we use it. We then loaded the data screen from a Picarro analyser onto the big screen and got busy measuring stuff!! We first measured the breath of a volunteer and the students took guesses at where the concentration would level off. We tested the hypothesis that compost would produce methane (it was actually a sink of methane!) and finally we cling wrapped a tree and the student actually got to see that it was taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. There was some fantastic questions from the students and much to the relief of the presenter, enough fun had by the students that they stayed engaged throughout.