Climate Changes: Fact or Fake? Low-Cost Hands-On Experiments to Verify It

Abstract

Climate changes (CC) remain a polemic topic, often causing conflicts. Scientific data indicate that the average planet temperature is rising mainly for anthropogenic actions, but this understanding must be widespread to influence the public opinion on attitudes and policymaking. Since our brains did not evolve to respond to slow/complex threats, as CC, we designed rapid, simple, interactive, hands-on educative activities. Inexpensive/reused material was employed to demonstrate the atmospheric alterations effects on global warming. We used plastic cake boxes with analogical thermometers or digital thermohygrometers and CO 2 release by effervescent tablets to mimic the greenhouse effect. The system demonstrates the influence of CO 2 , water vapor, smoke, weather, etc. on the air temperature and humidity. CO 2 enhanced temperatures within the boxes, by up to 6˚C. Interestingly, in the presence of vegetation, increased temperatures were associated with decreased air humidity and simultaneous water condensation on the box cover, apparently indicating increased evaporation and water drop formation. Educators of different disciplines (Earth Science, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Environmental Education, Ecology, etc.) and students can perform simple, transdisciplinary, hands-on activities within 50 min, evaluating different factors on the air temperature, and promoting transdisciplinary discussions during classes. In addition, the public can rapidly grasp CC principles in science fairs, promoting science literacy.

Scientific communication and scientific literacy for the public perception of the importance of environmental quality for public health

“…Therefore, SL should be an important schooling outcome and a consensus goal for science education, involving a multitude of intellectual resources, including the ability to conceptualize phenomena and reason from a scientific epistemology and build scientific ideas and arguments consistent with those of the scientific community, by analyzing and interpreting data and evidence consistently and adequately (Brown et al, 2005). In this sense, museums, educational centers and developing education and communication interventions using simple and practical educational tools also display significant potential for the promotion of environmental and scientific literacy, as well as in addressing scientific misconceptions, controversial topics and dismissing fake news (de los Santos et al, 2018;Bevilaqua et al, 2020;Suarez-Fontes et al, 2022;Suldovsky et al, 2022). These actions can also comprise an efficient strategy to select structuring concepts and themes from the Natural Sciences for the development of scientific literacy processes, such as the theory of biological evolution and/or basic paleontology concept, among others (Estrup and Achiam, 2019;Plutzer et al, 2020).…”