AP Environmental Science Summer Assignment Discovery High School Ms. Tabitha Brodnax, Mr. Eric Mau

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1 AP Environmental Science Summer Assignment Discovery High School Ms. Tabitha Brodnax, Mr. Eric Mau Welcome to AP Environmental Science. I am very excited to meet and work with each one of you and get to know you well over the coming year. To prepare you for class, I expect you to begin learning about the environment this summer and, hopefully, spend some quality time outdoors communing with nature. 1. Prepare for APES APES is a college level course with certain prerequisites. You are expected to enter the course with a significant understanding of basic scientific and mathematic concepts and skills, not to mention strong reading, writing, and speaking skills. Although we will continue to work toward developing your skills in all of these areas all year, your success in this class will be highly dependent on what you bring to it at the onset. Over the summer, brush up on everything below and be ready to take your first test on these skills and concepts as soon as the first day of school. Prerequisite Basic Scientific Concepts- You should already be familiar with every term/concept from this list- give the meaning in ten words or less in each box in your OWN words. Examples and/or pictures are also encouraged. Elements: Compounds: Molecules: Atoms: Ions: Nucleus (2 meanings) Protons Electrons Neutrons: Organic: Inorganic: Natural: Synthetic: Electromagnetic radiation: Energy Matter

2 Kinetic energy: Potential energy Radioactive decay: Half-life: Law of Conservation of Matter 1 st Law of Thermodynamics 2 nd Law of Thermodynamics Entropy: Metabolism Mutation Organism Species Population Community Producer/autotroph Consumer/heterotroph Photosynthesis (know the balanced equation) Cellular respiration (know the balanced equation) Aerobic Anaerobic Adaptation Trait Gene Chromosome Gene pool Evolution extinction Sustainability

3 Infrastructure Anthropogenic Steward/Stewardship Economics Environmental Science Biodiversity Environmentalism Degradation Ecology Habitat Niche Abiotic Factor Herbivore Omnivore Carnivore Detritivore Give the full name for the chemical abbreviations: C CO CO2 N NO NO 2 N 2 N 2 O NO 3 NH 3 NH 4 O O 2 O 3 P PO 4 S SO 2 SO 3-2 SO 4 H 2 S Cl K Mg Ca NaCl Fe Zn Pb Hg Al As Rn U H 2 O H H 2 CaCO 3 CH 4 C 6 H 12 O 6

4 Prerequisite Basic Mathematic Skills Scientific notation- Know how to convert large and small numbers into and out of scientific notation and how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers in scientific notation. % Difference- Know how to calculating the % difference or % error between two values or two results. Dimensional Analysis You should be able to convert any unit into any other unit accurately if given the conversion factor. Online tutorials are available: Prefixes m (milli) =1/1000 =10-3 c (cent) =1/100 =10-2 k (kilo) =1000 =10 3 M (mega) =1,000,000 =10 6 G (giga) =1,000,000,000 =10 9 T (tera) =1,000,000,000,000 =10 12 Scientific Notation Thousand = 10 3 =1,000 Million = 10 6 =1,000,000 (people in the US) Billion = 10 9 =1,000,000,000 (people on Earth) Trillion = =1,000,000,000,000 (National debt) - When using very large numbers, scientific method is often easiest to manipulate. For example, the US population is 370 million people or 370x10 6 or 3.7x When adding or subtracting, exponents must be the same. Add the numbers in front of the ten and keep the exponent the same. - When multiplying or dividing, multiply or divide the number in front of the ten and add the exponents if multiplying or subtract the exponents if dividing Ex. 9x10 6 / 3x10 2 = (9/3) x 10( 6-2 ) = 3 x 10 4 Percentage 17% = 17/100 =.17 - Remember that percent literally means divided by Percentage is a measure of the part of the whole. Or part divided by whole million is what percentage of the US population? 15 million / 300 million =.05 = 5% - What is 20% of this $15 bill so that I can give a good tip? $15 x.20 = $15 x 20/100 = $3 Math Problems Answer the questions. Show all work 1) What is one million times one thousand? Show your work in scientific notation. Give the answer in scientific notation and in words. 2) A population of deer had 200 individuals. If the population grows by 15% in one year, how many deer will there be the next year? 3) One year I had 40 AP Environmental Science students and the next year I had 50 Environmental Science students, what percentage did the population of APES students grow by? 4) Electricity costs 6 cents per kilowatt hour. In one month one home uses one megawatt hour of electricity. How much will the electric bill be? (be sure to look at the prefixes chart for the conversion of kilo to mega) 5) Your car gets 15 miles to the gallon and your friend s car gets 25 miles to the gallon. You decide to go on a road trip to Virginia Tech, which is 300 miles away. If gas costs $4 per gallon and you decide to split the gas money, how much money will you save in gas by driving your friend s car? 6) Virginia Beach is 10 miles wide and 30 miles long. If one inch of rain falls on Virginia Beach, how many cubic feet of rain fell on Virginia Beach? (Hint: convert all units to feet first).

5 7) An MP3 takes up about 16 kilobytes of memory per second of music. If you owned a one terabyte hard drive and filled it with only mp3s, how many days worth of music would you have? (keep track of units: kilobytes to terabytes and seconds to days) 2. Humans and the environment Environmental Science is the study of how humans interact with the environment and the effects of this relationship on both humans and the natural world. For this component you need to choose a particular issue in environmental science that we will be studying, find current events to familiarize yourself with the topic, and then find evidence of the issue in the world around you. A. Choose one topic in environmental science and find three current events about the topic (within the last two years). Read and analyze the articles. Either neatly write or type a short summary capturing the major points of the article. For each article have a citation in MLA or APA format. B. Keep this part of your summer assignment in a binder (you will keep this all year). The topics you may choose from are listed below. Air quality Water quality or the Chesapeake Bay Climate Change and/or carbon and greenhouse gasses Renewable Energy Non-renewable Energy (coal, oil, or natural gas) Biodiversity loss and/or endangered plant and animal species Environmental Injustice (if you don t know what this means look it up) Agriculture and soil erosion Pollution related human illnesses Human population and overconsumption of resources Answer the following questions with complete sentences and paragraphs when necessary. 1) Define the relationship between humans and the environment as it occurs through the issue you researched. Good points to include are: How do humans interact with the environment? What do they gain? What is the impact of these interactions on the natural world? Be very specific with details. Facts are beneficial when possible. 2) Are there any consequences to human health or standard of living as a result of the relationship? 3) Does this interaction between humans and the environment have any link to local, national, or international economies? 4) If there are problems associated with your topic, whom do they impact? [Ex: All humans? Humans in a particular country or socio-economic group?]