Trash to Treasure

Middle School Science

Students will complete surveys with their families to determine their consumption of oil

Students will research alternative fuels and investigate the positive and negative aspects of these fuels.

Students will present information about their alternative fuel source to the class

PowerPoint, poster, video, skit,

Students will act as members of a fuel company and debate other groups of students who have researched different alternative fuels while attempting to determine the best fuel choice for the future

Students will complete an open response question focused on the role of science in societal decisions

KY Standards

SC-6-I-U-3Students will understand that science can sometimes be used to

inform ethical decisions by identifying the likely consequences of an action, but cannot be used to establish if taking that action would be

right or wrong.SC-6-I-S-4

Students will differentiate the usefulness of scientific research to predict the possible consequences of decisions about environmental

issues from its limitations in making ethical/moral decisions about those issues

Peggy A. Dunn1, Kathryn A. Godby2, Mingming Lu3, Ming Chai3

1Newport, KY, Newport High School; 2Florence, KY, R.A. Jones Middle School; 3Cincinnati, OH, University of Cincinnati, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

High School Math –AP Statistics

Grant ID No EEC0601960

Students will “work” for a company that produces biodiesel from waste frying oil.

Students will develop and test a hypothesis concerning random samples of oil.

3 random samples 4 separate restaurant chains

Students will perform a titration using phenolphthalein to determine the percent of free fatty acid that is in each sample.

Students will perform transesterification Measure glycerol and biodiesel Calculate 90%,95%, and 99% confidence

intervals to predict amount of biodiesel per liter of WFO

Students will perform hypothesis testing to determine if significant differences exist between samples or between restaurant chains.Students will present their findings to the class using PowerPoint.

NCTM Standards

Students will organize and consolidate their mathematical thinking through communication

Students will recognize and apply mathematics in contexts outside of mathematics.

Students will formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer them;

select and use appropriate statistical methods to analyze data

R.A. Jones Middle School

Application High School: Work in a lab using applied inferential statistics to test for

significant differences between samples of waste frying oil Middle School: Research an alternative fuel and use information to debate

student groups supporting other fuels

CareersMiddle and High School: Introduces students to a field of research and marketing

that can be investigated using math and science. Special emphasis on applications and opportunities in engineering.

SocietyMiddle and High School: Energy is a topic of high importance. Students look at

how they can contribute to a solution and impact our future environment.

Misconceptions

Only a low performance vehicle can run on biodiesel

Referenceswww.unitedstreaming.com

www.greenestsiteever.com/.../07/earth-race3.jpghttp://www.maui.net/~toystore/tours.htm

www.travelmatters.org

AcknowledgementsSpecials thanks to Dr. Ming Ming Lu, Mr. Ming Chai, Dr. Jon Breiner, Dr. Glenn Markle, Mr. Eugene

Rutz, Dr. Anant Kukreti, and Mrs. Andrea Burrows