For our Grade 11 collaborative science project, we were tasked with bringing together the three disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology to create an interactive demonstration that could teach younger students about a big topic of the natural world. With such an open-ended project, we started with our common interests.
Julio (physics) was interested in focusing on something to do with water, such as fluid dynamics, and Douglas (chemistry) suggested coral reefs, which tied in well to Lucy and Cruz’s biology perspective. Since Julio and Cruz have personal experience with coral reefs, we decided to build a project that shows why it’s a big deal that the ocean’s chemistry is changing.
Combating Misinformation
There is a lot of misinformation in the world, especially on social media. The goal of the collaborative science project was to use science communication to take a scientific topic and teach it to other SJS students in an interactive way that was both engaging and truthful.
We started by gathering information from general sources, like Wikipedia and Google. But this is only a starting point, since we can’t know for sure that information from these sources is accurate. So we looked to authentic sources, including National Geographic and the Philippines Government, to gather our data.
Most people forget that the ocean is a carbon sink; it absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, which helps stop the planet from overheating. But that means the ocean is getting more acidic with the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by human activities like our emissions and urban and agricultural run-off.
This is dangerous because corals support entire ecosystems. They’re homes and hiding places for fish that feed the bigger ecosystem. If the homes die, so do the fish, and that impacts people’s livelihoods too. There’s also other impacts like erosion and losing natural buffers that protect the shorelines from waves and storms. Basically, corals are a really important foundation for the oceans.
With this understanding we had to find a way to communicate to a general audience how rising CO2 levels causes ocean acidification and impacts corals. We decided to create a simulation over three different time periods that could visually show people how the CO2 impacts coral health and development. With the data we found, we focused on 2006, 2026 and the projected CO2 levels for 2046.
How TUMS Helps us Learn About Ocean Acidification
We used the stomach medication, TUMS, as a stand-in for coral because they have similar structures. We dissolved tablets in each of the water samples to observe how they behaved in the different levels of acidity.
The 2006 sample had a small impact on the TUMS “coral” because the water was closer to neutral. In the 2026 water the “coral” started warping, which shows us that coral can still develop, but they grow slowly and are made more fragile because they can’t make their shells stronger in this kind of environment. It really surprised us how much the “coral” dissolves in just a small amount of acid. And in the 2046 water we see the “coral” fully dissolving in nearly a minute. If emissions of carbon continue as projected, corals don’t really stand a chance.
The Importance of Science Communication
Trying to make something heavy like ocean acidification fun for younger students was definitely a challenge. We used bright colours and the interactive component to get their attention, and then give them the facts. We saw this in action when we visited Science World to understand how curators design their exhibits to connect with visitors.
The whole project really showed us that science is literally everywhere. We saw that in everyone else’s projects too; science saves millions of lives through cures for diseases, it prevents damage from earthquakes, and helps us understand the physics of volcanoes. We can move cars and fly planes because of science. Combining the three perspectives of biology, chemistry and physics is an interesting way to explore how science contributes to every aspect of our lives.
