In the Greenhouse Videos: Resources for a Hands-on Climate Change Curriculum

If you’re looking for easy climate change activities to bring into your classroom or home, PRI’s In the Greenhouse video series will guide you through simple experiments to bring your science curriculum to life. PRI’s Senior Education Associate, Alexandra Moore, walks viewers through step-by-step experiments, explanations, and demonstrations in this digital lab manual for The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change. These videos, intended as science education resources for middle- and high-schoolers, provide examples of climate change science and solutions in topics ranging from infrared radiation and the greenhouse effect to how sunlight is stored in soil. Videos like Face the Trace Gas allow students to calculate for themselves how carbon dioxide emissions change the climate and provide real world visualizations.

Some videos can easily be incorporated into a lesson, like Watch CO2 Cross the Street, while others, like How to Make a CO2 Flux Chamber, provide  lab activities for topics such as photosynthesis, respiration, and the carbon cycle. These experiments are designed to be inexpensive – DIY Solar Energy: Photosynthetic Solar Cells encourages students to put on their engineer’s hardhat and make a solar cell with only berry dye and some basic lab equipment, along with a kit that can be shipped for free from Cornell University Center for Materials Research (CCMR)’s lending library.

The video first explains in accessible language the concepts behind the experiment (the benefits of solar energy, topographic gradients, and the basics of circuitry), then walks the viewer through the procedure, supplemented by animated visualizations. A full activity guide, including learning outcomes, handouts, and additional videos and explanations is available on PRI’s Earth@Home website. If you do not wish to order a kit, Kitchen Climate Science demonstrates wind power and sea level rise experiments that require materials most people have at home and can be adapted to suit various ages.

Explanatory videos such as Parts per Million: a Little is a Lot provide multiple analogies that connect complex concepts to students’ day-to-day lives, and are applicable to any middle or high school science curriculum. For chemistry classes, Feel the Heat Capacity provides an introduction to the concept of heat capacity, along with a quick and easy experiment.

Thermal Expansion & Sea Level Rise further examines thermal properties of water and how they cause global sea level rise, all with supporting calculations. Activities for biology and environmental science classes, like Trees from Thin Air, get students outside, and encourage them to look at the world around them in new ways. This video shows how to calculate how much carbon dioxide a tree has absorbed from the atmosphere, a process that at first can seem almost alchemical. The next video in the series, Photosynthesis: Plants’ Superpower, details the process, and how to calculate it empirically with photosynthesis equations.

Respiration: Reuse, Recycle explains the inverse process, ties in new concepts such as steady states, and further explains others, including the carbon cycle. While each episode of In the Greenhouse can stand alone, explaining all relevant topics, they can be combined to show the interrelations of environmental science concepts, and form a detailed resource for science education curricula.

More Resources

You will find teaching activities that include these videos and more on PRI’s Teach Climate Change webpage.