Population Growth Homework

Homework (Due Friday, 12/4/15): To get a feel for how population growth has historically impacted the environment, I am assigning this important reading selection: "Head Count: Fertilizer, Fertility, and the Clashes over Population Growth", by Elizabeth Kolbert (attached below). Stop when you get to the name Stephen Phillip Kramer. As you read, jot down some notes. Once you have completed the reading, write a 1-page persuasive essay (approx. 300 words) explaining whether the development of the Haber-Bosch Process has had an overall positive or negative impact on human civilization. Do not use any sources other than the Kolbert article and your own thoughts/ideas. Include some of the TFR (total fertility rate) data from the article, and mention the concept of doubling time in your essay. Use at least 2 quotes from the article. When your essay is complete, give it a title and post it on blogger.

Homework (Due Tuesday, 11/17):  Choose one of your peers and assess their draft lab report.  You will be assessing the nine aspects listed below.  It is not enough just to mark it as complete, partial or not at all.  Be descriptive with your feedback, and specifically outline what is missing from partial aspects, and where you marked any aspects as complete justify those marks with an explanation of what the student did to complete them satisfactorily.  Also, give general feedback on the formatting of the lab report and overall strengths and areas for improvement in each of the three criteria.  Please provide clear indication if the report connects student data with the data-logger printout (it is incomplete if this criterion has not been satisfied).  Also, please be aware that the discussion/conclusions sections for most reports will NOT address the procedures outlined in the introductory sections due to limited sampling opportunities while we were on the research vessel.  Please do not mark a lab incomplete simply because they were unable to implement their plan.

For a detailed description of the the nine aspects below you must click here.

Also, FYI, here are directions for inserting graphs into Blogger:  Right click on the excel graph and copy.  When you right click to paste the graph into your word document, you will have some paste options. Choose the last option on the right that allows you to paste the graph as a picture. Once you have the graph pasted into word using that option, you can right click on it and "save as picture" onto your computer. Then you can use the Blogger toolbar at the top to insert the picture into your post.  (NOTE:  THE LAB REPORT MUST BE MARKED INCOMPLETE IF IT DOES NOT CONTAIN AT LEAST 1 ORIGINAL GRAPH).

         

Criteria	Aspects	Complete /2	Partial /1	Not at all /0	Mark
	Defines the problem and selects variables
Planning	Controls variables
	Develops a method for collection of data
Data Collection	Recording raw data
and	Processing raw data
Processing	Presenting processed data
Discussion,	Discussing and reviewing
Evaluation and	Evaluating procedure/suggested improvements
Conclusion	Concluding

Teacher’s notes and comments on this item of work:

Criteria	Strengths	Weaknesses/ For improvement	Notes
Planning
Data collection and processing
Discussion, evaluation and conclusion