Raising Student Awareness of Environmental Issues via Writing Assignments with Differential Equations

Authors

Michelle L. Ghrist, Gonzaga UniversityFollow

Publication Date

1-4-2024

Keywords

environment, sustainability, river flow, carbon storage, mathematical modeling, writing-enriched, differential equation, initial value problem, numerical methods, incompletely-structured problems

Disciplines

Applied Mathematics | Mathematics | Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Science and Mathematics Education

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss two environmentally-focused writing assignments that I developed and implemented in recent integral calculus and differential equations courses. These models of carbon storage and PCB’s in a river provide interesting applications of one-compartment mixing problems. The assignments were intended to focus student attention on sustainability concerns while also developing other essential skills. I discuss these assignments and their effect on my students’ technical writing and environmental awareness. Detailed introductory instructions and mostly complete solutions to these assignments appear in the appendices, to include sample student work.

Recommended Citation

Ghrist, Michelle L. (2024) "Raising Student Awareness of Environmental Issues via Writing Assignments with Differential Equations," CODEE Journal: Vol. 17, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/codee/vol17/iss1/5

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License