Student Work: Biology & Society, Spring 2017

By Kevin Sinusas, Biology Teacher
& CGHS Introductory Bio students

Students in Common Ground’s introductory biology course ended the semester by conducting a set of extended investigations related to energy use in New Haven. They looked at how energy is generated in New Haven, what it’s used for, and what impacts it has on local and global scales. They constructed, positioned, and analysed their own air pollution detectors, examined healthy and polluted pig lungs, and hooked themselves up to electrodes to see the relationships between breathing, heart rate and exercise. Through this and other work, they were able to examine, at a local scale, how the use of polluting energy sources in New Haven contributes to huge differences in asthma rates from neighborhood to neighborhood. Globally, they also looked at how fossil fuel power plants here in New Haven could contribute to the spread of infectious diseases like malaria on the other side of our warming planet. Finally, they examined how these local and global issues intersect with important social dimensions like race and socioeconomic status.

Click on the cover below to see and read all about the work of these young scientists in their own words.