Natural Resources
A natural material or energy source that humans use
What is a natural resource?
A community of organisms and the nonliving components in their environment.
What is an ecosystem?
The practice of asking questions and developing explanations about how things work.
What is science?
Features or qualities that an engineering solution should have.
What are criteria?
Science investigations explore phenomena, while engineering investigations focus on doing this.
What is define and solve problems?
Resources that are used more quickly than they can be replenished, such as coal and oil.
What are nonrenewable resources?
The number and variety of organisms in an ecosystem.
What is biodiversity?
The practice of defining problems and developing solutions.
What is engineering?
Limitations or restrictions that engineers face when designing a solution.
What are constraints?
Both science and engineering investigations depend heavily on the results of tests and this type of analysis.
What is data analysis?
Resources that can be replaced in a relatively short time, such as sunlight and wind.
What are renewable resources?
The general effect that obtaining natural resources has on ecosystems and biodiversity.
What is decreasing biodiversity?
Any tool, process, or system that is made to solve a problem.
What is technology?
The act of giving up one design feature in order to keep another.
What is a tradeoff?
The amount of force that a material can tolerate before it breaks.
What is tensile strength?
Out of sand, sunlight, and wind, this is the only nonrenewable resource listed.
What is sand?
The phase of a product's life cycle that includes its use by consumers, driven by consumer preferences.
What is the consumer use phase?
The group of professionals who use tools developed by engineers to investigate the world.
Who are scientists?
Design testing that is repeated many times, involving testing, analyzing, and refining.
What is iterative testing?
Tensile strength answers questions about how a material's chemical properties relate to its ability to withstand being pulled out of this.
What is shape?
If consumer preferences suddenly cause a massive surge in demand for a resource like wood, how might this impact whether it functions as a renewable resource?
What is it can strain the resource, causing it to be used more quickly than it can be replenished?
How does an increase in consumer demand for manufactured products indirectly lead to a drop in ecosystem biodiversity?
What is higher demand drives more resource extraction and production, which negatively affects ecosystems and decreases biodiversity?
If a polluted local river needs attention, how would the roles of a scientist and an engineer differ in addressing the problem?
What is a scientist would investigate to explain why the pollution happens, while an engineer would define the problem and develop a technological solution to fix it?
If an engineer chooses a cheaper material to stay within a budget constraint, but gives up some durability, what engineering design concept are they using?
What is a tradeoff?
Why must an engineer rely on data analysis and test results rather than guesses when evaluating a material's tensile strength?
What is to provide objective evidence about how chemical properties relate to the material's ability to withstand stretching and breaking forces?