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Resources for Grades 9-12:

Transport to the Future: Making a Plan for Positive Change

Module Description For high school students, the future is now. Students will use scientific data as well as engineering testing and design to learn about the factors that affect vehicle efficiency and safety. They research real-world mass transit options, alternative fuels, and government tax incentives to provide alternatives to the gasoline-powered car. Students collect information about the types of vehicles and transportation habits used by teachers, friends, and neighbors. Finally, they use this information to create an action plan to reduce transportation-related energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in their community.
Module Project Students analyze local private and mass transportation use and develop a plan to decrease the amount of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere by individuals in the community.
Objectives
  • Identify efficiency for vehicles that use different sources of power, including gasoline, electricity, and biofuels.
  • Identify personal driving habits that use fuel more efficiently and reduce automobile emissions.
  • Explain ways to conserve energy and reduce emissions from transportation, including the use of mass transit and alternative fuel sources for vehicles.
  • Develop an action plan to reduce greenhouse gas and other emissions from vehicles used in the local community.

Red Toolbox and Tires

Lesson Plans

1: Introduction to Fuel Efficiency Students begin their research by considering different types of energy sources that are currently used to power vehicles. The students use data to help develop an operational definition of efficiency for these different fuels.

2: How Does Driving Behavior Affect Fuel Efficiency? Students explore different aspects of driving behavior that lead to increased fuel consumption. They explore gear ratios and efficiency of the power needed to propel a vehicle.

3: Driving in Luxury Students design and build a structure meant to withstand a large impact in order to examine the costs of building safe vehicles. They use real data to determine how much extra energy is used to run car electronics such as GPS devices and DVD players.

4: Mass Transit Students use data on individual vehicles and mass transit to compare the efficiency of both types of transportation. They consider factors that cause people to choose one type of transportation over another.

5: Government Incentives Students examine incentives that encourage the use of alternative energy source vehicles. They use data to examine the opportunities and challenges of using alternative energy vehicles and consider the requirements needed to expand this use in the future.

6: Community Survey Students go out into the community to collect information about the vehicles that are driven by their neighbors, friends, and teachers. They also determine what alternative forms of transportation are being used in the community.

7: Can You Design a Better Community? After reviewing the main concepts developed in the first six lessons of this module, students work individually or collaboratively to design an action plan intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their community. Students create multimedia presentations to share their plans with their classmates.

Supplemental Lesson Plans

See below for additional STEM-related exercises and lessons to extend topics for students.

Energy and Cars: What Does the Future Hold? Investigate fossil fuels and alternative energy sources, attitudes toward them, and current research.

Junkyard Wars: Cool Cars Explore what it takes to maintain constant velocity.

Junkyard Wars: Air Movers Learn about Rube Goldberg machines, and design and build a machine that uses more than six separate steps to move an empty aluminum can.

Animating Motion Activity Animate sequences of pictures that model a set of physical conditions, such as the effects of gravity on a falling body.

Student Resources

Keep your class engaged in this module's topics with tools set aside just for them.

Students can fuel up on even more action with topic-related videos, interactives, animations, and puzzles in the High School section.

Go!