Dredged Materials
Students will collect and analyze data from USACE and use the engineering design process to determine the benefits of dredging to predict future usage based on past data.
Overview
Students use the engineering design process and USACE data to explore beneficial uses of dredged material. The lesson opens with shoreline erosion calculations at 25 cm per year, then moves to what dredged material is and how placing silt on a coastline could help. Students sequence the steps of the design process and complete a Design Challenge documented in an Engineering Design Folio. Using the USACE website, each student compares one division with the totals, predicts 2020 to 2025, and builds three Excel charts. Teams make a poster or model, share it in a gallery walk, and the folios, graphs, and posters are evaluated.
Lesson Objectives
- Collect and analyze data from USACE and use the engineering design process to determine the benefits of dredging to predict future usage based on past data.
Standards
NGSS · 8
- HS-ETS1-1Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.
- HS-ETS1-2Design a solution to a complex real-world problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable problems that can be solved through engineering.
- HS-ETS1-3Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts
- HS-ESS2-1Develop a model to illustrate how Earth’s internal and surface processes operate at different spatial and temporal scales to form continental and ocean-floor features.
- HS-ESS2-2Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
- HS-ESS2-5Plan and conduct an investigation of the properties of water and its effects on Earth materials and surface processes.
- HS-ESS3-1Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
- HS-ESS3-4Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.