Classroom Materials

This activity allows students to compare the net energy and/or net greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted during the life cycle production of ethanol from switchgrass, diverse prairie and corn stover.

In this set of activities, students investigate how plants harness and use different sources of energy during germination and growth. Students ask questions, make predictions, and then plan and carry out investigations using Wisconsin Fast Plants® to collect evidence to test predictions and construct scientific arguments.

In this activity, raffia ribbon is used to create a visual representation of the differing root depths in biofuel crops and prairie plants. The wall hanging can be used to promote discussion about plants’ ability to sequester carbon and contribute to soil carbon.

This activity helps students visualize and model a commonly published diagram of global carbon pools and fluxes. Students create a scaled 3-D visual of global carbon pools and net fluxes between pools with anthropogenic influences.

This field investigation serves to strengthen student understanding of the ability of plants to sequester carbon above and below ground. Students will measure above ground biomass by harvesting small samples, and root growth using ingrown root-cores.

In these field investigations, students explore the effects of biofuel crop production on invertebrate diversity and the effects those organisms have on pollination rates and weed seed predation.

Students analyze data detailing global energy sources and sinks (uses) and construct a diagram to show the relative scale and the connections between them. Discussions of scale, historical, socio-environmental and geographic variation in this data and implications for future energy use are included.

In this set of lessons, students explore the meaning of the term sustainability and then investigate and evaluate the sustainability of different transportation fuels, eg. gasoline, biofuel, or electricity. In the process they research the steps required to produce and use different fuels and tally associated environmental impacts.

Can perennial biomass crops compete with king corn? In this GLBRC Data Dive, students analyze and interpret data on the biomass production of different bioenergy crops grown on Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) experimental farms in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Can microbiologists engineer new strains of yeast to produce more biofuel from the same amount of plant biomass? Students analyze results from a directed evolution experiment to create mutant yeast strains that can ferment all of the sugars in plant biomass.