Here are suggested topics to discuss in your classroom while planning a trek. Understanding these notions will help your students design a robust experience while “trekking”. Please note that a trek must be a mobile outing where students are moving around to explore pollution. The data will not be displayed well on the map if immobile, fixed-base monitoring occurs.



o To plan a trek in your classroom, it may be helpful to first utilize the GO3 Project’s curricula on ozone and black carbon, including sources and health impacts. This will build a foundation for your students to understand the pollutants they will be measuring in their environment.
o It is helpful for the students to understand primary versus secondary pollution while monitoring.
 Black carbon is a primary pollutant (a pollutant emitted directly from a source to the atmosphere), and so in monitoring black carbon they should see an increase in concentration near a polluting source.
 However, ozone is a secondary pollutant (a pollutant produced in chemical transformations in the atmosphere). An increase in ozone concentration won’t necessarily be observed near a polluting source, but rather is formed through chemical reactions and can occur over many miles. In fact, near a combustion source that outputs a high concentration of nitric oxide (NO) the ozone concentration may be zero due to its reaction with NO to form NO
2
, another toxic pollutant.
o Discuss your local environment and community. Are you in a valley? A busy city? A farming community? What types of industries are close by? Is there a lot of dust, rain, sunlight, wind? Perhaps there are environmental justice issues that you and your students are interested in exploring. o What types of natural or anthropogenic sources might influence your data? o Examples of questions to ask:
 Are you near a highway? Where and/or when might you observe heavy traffic?
 Does your school have a bus lot where many buses idle?
 Are you near an industrial area? Energy production area, coal-fired power plant, etc? How might this influence your data? Rural area?
 Discuss seasonal factors for your trek, such as how much sunlight there is. Do this and other natural factors vary seasonally?


 Do you experience forest fires or controlled burns ever in your area?
 Are people using wood-burning stoves to heat their homes?
o Use the scientific method to explore where students might see high levels of ozone and black carbon in their community.
 Ask a question: where might one see high levels of ozone and black carbon?
 Background research: Use the curriculum and classroom discussion to form an understanding of the pollutants you will be measuring.
 Construct a hypothesis: Have students form groups to hypothesize where they should explore pollutants in their environment. Each group’s hypothesis can later become an actual trek.
 Test your hypothesis: Conduct your trek using the mobile instrumentation. Be sure your classroom does at least 5 treks.
 Analyze your data: Using the data mapper on the GO3 Website, you will be able to visualize your air pollution data on a map, and compare it with other treks around the country.
 Communicate your results: Each trek will become its own data map, where students will comment about their experience on the trek and what they observed. Additionally, students will comment and ask questions on other people’s treks. We encourage your class to have a post-discussion after the treks to describe the environment (if any) you found the highest levels of pollutants in. For black carbon, what, if any, combustion sources were nearby?
For ozone, what factors may have contributed to the obsrered data? How might these levels affect the people and environment there?