The Sea Ice Esti­ma­tion Project asks stu­dents to ana­lyze and project changes in Arc­tic sea ice over time, pro­vid­ing a hands-on way to explore data and make pre­dic­tions.

Big Ideas

  • Explore how math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ling can reveal changes in our envi­ron­ment.
  • Exam­ine 3D objects by cal­cu­lat­ing area, sur­face area, and vol­ume.

Com­pe­ten­cies:

  • Esti­mat­ing and rea­son­ing through math­e­mat­i­cal mod­els.
  • Visu­al­iz­ing data rela­tion­ships with graphs and cal­cu­la­tions.
  • Con­nect­ing math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts to real-world issues.

The Activ­i­ty
Stu­dents will esti­mate sea ice area in the Arc­tic for 1980 and 2024, graph the data, and extrap­o­late trends for future years like 2040 and 2050. They’ll com­pare their esti­mates to actu­al data and crit­i­cal­ly ana­lyze dif­fer­ences, reflect­ing on poten­tial errors and the impact of cli­mate change.

Includes:

  • Graph tem­plates to visu­al­ize changes in sea ice over decades.
  • Real-world data for com­par­i­son, spark­ing deep­er dis­cus­sion about envi­ron­men­tal trends.
  • Ques­tions encour­ag­ing crit­i­cal think­ing about sources of error and mod­el­ling lim­i­ta­tions.

Work­sheet: Sea Ice Esti­ma­tion Project

Sea-Ice-Esti­ma­tion-Pro­jec­t‑1