Team: 21
School: Monte del Sol
Area of Science: Enviromental
Interim: Definition of problem-
As time passes and technology grows we become more educated as a society and we become more aware of the problems within our world. With our population rapidly growing it has become a concern whether or not our earth will be able to continue to sustain us as a population. Since our population is so large we produce lots of pollution much of which ends up in the ocean. We know that at least fifty percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean so for this project we want to simulate how our main oxygen source would be affected by different variables associated with human population growth.
Plan for Solving Problem Computationally-
We plan to code a program with Python that will predict just how much our oxygen source will be affected considering different variables. Variables that we will be testing will be population growth, people moving to more sustainable lifestyles, implementation of laws protecting our environment, continuing and not changing any of the current laws/regulations, and programs devoted to cleaning up the ocean. We understand that as times change so do people's morals so we know that as our society becomes more advanced and educated that more and more people will begin to cut out single use waste and replace it with reusable items. Before the pandemic the City of Santa Fe was encouraging the use of reusable bags when shopping in place of single use plastic bags. Although it was a small effort, the results were widely seen and finding a way to take into account small efforts like these is also on our to-do list for this project.
Progress-
We have finished our research portion of the project. Some of the research that we’ve put into this project include statistics from the last 5 years of the amount of pollution made its way to the ocean, as well as how it affects the creation of oxygen. We’ve also moved onto making exponential equations to help us predict how our population will grow and how the amount of pollution will grow in relationship to that. Right now we are working on an equation that will help us predict the amount of people switching to sustainable lifestyles. Our next step would be to find how to estimate population growth taking into consideration evolving social factors. Then, we will incorporate this into our Python code.
Expected results-
From our results, we expect to see how the amount of oxygen produced by the oceans will decrease if we continue to manage our waste the way we are doing currently. We also hope to see increased oxygen levels when we look at results that take into account the amount of people moving to more sustainable lifestyles, the amount of people deciding to not have children with evolving social factors, and the hope of laws/regulations being implemented to protect our environment. We hope that the results of our project will inspire others to make small but meaningful steps that will help us protect our planet in the long term.
Citations
NOAA (2020, June 12). How much oxygen comes from the ocean? Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html
Roser, M., Ritchie, H., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2013, May 09). World Population Growth. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
Guern, C. (n.d.). When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from
https://plastic-pollution.org/
Population. (n.d.). Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/
DeSilver, D. (2020, May 30). Living more sustainably a challenge for Americans. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/how-americans-are-and-arent-making-eco-friendly-lifestyle-changes/
Team Members: Betsy Venegas, Dayana Benevente
Sponsoring Teacher: Rhonda Crespo
Team Members:
Betsy Venegas
Dayana Benavente
Sponsoring Teacher: Rhonda Crespo