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Science · Grade 12

Engineering for Sustainability

Learners act as sustainability engineers for a fictional rural school that needs safe water and a more comfortable building. They define the problem with measurable criteria and constraints, run simplified life-cycle assessments with functional units and break-even points, and design for reuse, repair and recycling using material-flow calculations. They then build a weighted decision matrix from raw data, normalising each criterion and testing its sensitivity, and apply everything to drinking-water treatment and to heat flow through a building's envelope.

  • 5 lessons
  • About 125 minutes
  • Engineering for sustainability check: 12 questions
  • Ways to answer: choose an answer, draw a graph, highlight a text, match pairs, type a number and put in order
See plans Included with Family, Teacher and School plans. Open in PlayOwl

What learners will discover

  • Define a sustainability design problem with stakeholders, measurable criteria and pass/fail constraints, and break it into smaller subproblems.
  • Carry out a simplified life-cycle comparison using a functional unit, and calculate break-even points between reusable and single-use options.
  • Apply design for reuse, repair and recycling, and calculate effective recycling rates and the resource savings of recycled content.
  • Evaluate competing designs with a weighted decision matrix built from normalised measured data, after applying constraints, and test how sensitive the result is to the weights.
  • Explain the purpose of each stage of water and wastewater treatment, and calculate and reduce heat flow through a building's envelope.

Lessons

  1. Framing a sustainability design problem 7 steps4 practiceabout 22 min
  2. Life-cycle comparison and break-even 8 steps5 practiceabout 25 min
  3. Designing for a circular economy 8 steps5 practiceabout 24 min
  4. Decision matrices from real data 7 steps5 practiceabout 26 min
  5. Water treatment and green buildings 9 steps6 practiceabout 28 min
  6. Engineering for sustainability check 12 questions at the end

Keep exploring

More 12th grade science

Guide for grown-ups