Creating a Carbon Footprint for Charity Fair 2017 12/3/17

Summary: 

     This week in science we learned about the carbon footprint of the product we are creating for Charity Fair 2017. What I now know is what the total amount of CO2 we produced from the creation of our product. I now know how much CO2 was  produced by each of our materials. For example, I know that in total the felt produced 428.615 of CO2/kg. I also now know the types of vehicles used to ship materials and how much grams of CO2 per kilogram each produces. The types of vehicles used to ship materials/products are planes, trains, trucks, and cars. And the amount of CO2 each produces is for a plane it produces 0.8g of CO2 per mile, a train produces is 0.1g of CO2 per mile, a truck produces 0.17g of CO2 per mile, and lastly a car produces 0.41g of CO2 per mile. I also now know how much grams of CO2 the materials my group used to create our product created. The raw materials used to create our product created 10480.8832g of CO2/kg. That is a lot of CO2 produced and this can greatly affect the environment. Because based on what I now know about CO2 produced is that it is considered a green house gas and it causes climate change by trapping all of the hot air into the earth and keeping the earth hot. This is also known as global warming and based on what I learned this week and what I now is that shipping products is a huge part of climate change/global warming.

S&EP5-Using Mathematics:

     I used mathematics this week through creating variables and writing equations. For example, the dependent variables I created were how much CO2 each vehicle created (I said them above) and the independent variable was how much miles each material traveled. I then used these two variables to get my numbers I said above which were how much CO2 each raw material produced and what the total amount of CO2 produced was. For example, for each material I would take the probable vehicle choose to ship the material and multiply it by the total amount of miles it traveled to get to the retailer. We then used the variables again because the materials journey does not just stop there, it must also get to the school some how. So we used how much CO2 a car produced (because we use a car to get to school) and multiplied it by the distance in miles from the retailer to the school. We then added those two products (the answers to the two multiplication problems I described above) to figure out how much CO2 the product created over its journey. Then to get the total we added up each of the amount of CO2 produced by each product to get the total amount of CO2 produced.

XCC-Systems and System Models:

     The system I identified this week was the map my group created for charity fair that is shown above. The parts of the system are the lines that represent the traveling of a material, the titles that tell me what each line and marker is, the descriptions that give extra information, and the markers that represent where each place is (retailers, manufacturers, and school). The advantages of thinking of this is a system is it truly helps you visualize and understand better of the carbon footprint of our product. This model of the system helps me visualize its components and explain the way it works. It does this by actually having all of the information in one place and actually giving a representation of how the journey looked like.

Multiplier-Initiator:

     This week I was an initiator because I would always be the one asking the questions so I could calculate the numbers and insert numbers needed to finish all the data we need to know. I asked questions for calculating numbers such as, "how much miles did it travel?" and "how much CO2 does that vehicle produce?" These questions helped me to calculate and get the numbers needed faster. The questions I asked for inserting numbers were questions that involved how much CO2 was produced and where can I find this information. All of the questions I asked this week really helped me to do my work much more efficiently.