Experiment worksheets on climate change

Results of scientific research are often difficult to interpret for non-experts. For this reason, researchers also actively engage in the transfer of knowledge to the non-expert public. This consists in synthesising the current scientific knowledge about a topic and converting it into formats accessible to a targeted audience. Nowadays, the relevance of knowledge transfer is increasingly recognised in the academic world. Part of this recognition is due to the urgency of communicating climate change to the general public.

To contribute to the awareness about climate change among young people, we provide here a set of experiment worksheets to understand some physical processes behind climate change. The experiments proposed are suitable for students of the tenth grade or higher and focus on the following topics: albedo feedback; ice melt; oceans acidification; thermal expansion; thermohaline circulation. These experiments can be carried out with materials of every day use, which makes them accessible to low budget schools. The sheets are available in four languages: English, Italian, German, French and Spanish. They are the result of a collaboration between colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research: design of the experiments and creation of the English and Italian versions by Francesca Doglioni; translation to German by Elke Burkhardt, Elena Schall, Sandra Tippenhauer, Carina Engicht; translation to French by Marylou Athanase; translation to Spanish by Pedro Llanillo del Río and Eugenio Ruiz Castillo. This project was initiated in the context of the MOSAiC School 2019 outreach concept.