Name: Date:

Student Exploration: Carbon Cycle

Directions: Follow the instructions to go through the simulation. Respond to the questions and
prompts in the orange boxes.

Vocabulary: atmosphere, biomass, biosphere, carbon reservoir, carbon sink, fossil fuel, geosphere,
greenhouse gas, hydrosphere, lithosphere, photosynthesis

Prior Knowledge Questions (Do these BEFORE using the Gizmo.)

In the process of photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and water (H2O)
from the soil. Using the energy of sunlight, plants build molecules of glucose (C6H12O6) and oxygen (O2).

1. How do plants on Earth affect the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere?

The plants absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis.

2. Animals eat plants and produce carbon dioxide and water. How do animals affect the amount of carbon in
Earth’s atmosphere?

They release carbon in the atmosphere

Gizmo Warm-up
The Carbon Cycle Gizmo allows you to follow the many paths an atom of
carbon can take through Earth’s systems. To begin, notice the black carbon
atom in the Atmospheric CO2 area, highlighted in yellow. The glowing blue
areas represent possible locations the carbon atom could go next.

1. From Earth’s atmosphere, where can the carbon atom go next?

The ocean, plants, and exposed rocks

2. Click on Land plants and read the description. How did the carbon atom get from the atmosphere to a
plant?

From exposed rocks and atmospheres.

3. Select Land animals. How did the carbon atom get from land plants into the animal?

Through the process of photosynthesis. Carbon moves

from plants to animals through food chains.

4. Select Atmospheric CO2. How did the carbon atom get from land animals back to the atmosphere?

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 The animal releasers the carbon into the air by process of
cellular respiration.

Activity A: Get the Gizmo ready:

Carbon pathways ● Click Reset.

Introduction: Earth can be divided into four systems. The atmosphere is the air above Earth’s surface. The
hydrosphere is composed of all of Earth’s water. The geosphere is the rocky, non-living part of Earth. The
biosphere consists of all living things, including people. Some scientists use the term “anthroposphere” to
describe everything made or modified by humans.

Question: How does carbon move between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere?

1. Explore: Use the Gizmo to create a path for carbon that begins and ends in the atmosphere. Fill in the
steps in the path below. Then, label each location with the system it represents. Finally, summarize very
briefly how the carbon atom got to that location.

Carbon path System How it got there

Atmospheric CO2 Atmosphere Atmospheric CO2 comes from volcanoes,

burning fossil fuels, and other sources.

Land Plants Biosphere Plants go through photosynthesis

Land animals Biosphere Animals eat plants to gain energy

Soil Geosphere Animals die and remains decay into

the soil.

Sediments Geosphere Soil was washed into streams and

build up under water masses.

Lithosphere Geosphere Sediments get compressed into

sedimentary tocks that are rich in
carbon.

Volcano Atmosphere Volcano erupts putting CO back in

the atmosphere

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2. Create: Click Reset. Use the Gizmo to create a path in which the carbon atom goes from the atmosphere
to the hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere. Describe each transition briefly.

Atmosphere Hydrosphere Biosphere Geosphere

Atmospheric CO2 Oceanic CO Marine Sediments

plants/lgae

Volcanoes, burning fossil Cold Plants and Plants and algae

fuels, and other sources. temperatures algae go sink to the bottom of
from the ocean through the ocean and guilds
dissolves and photosynthesis up large amounts of
stores the co in carbon
deep waters

3. Explore: Use the Gizmo to create three more carbon paths, each starting and ending in the atmosphere.
Label each location with A for atmosphere, B for biosphere, G for geosphere, or H for hydrosphere. (You
can also use P for the anthroposphere if you like, or just include it in the biosphere.)

Path 1: Atmospheric, Land Plants, and Atmospheric

Path 2: Atmospheric, Land plants, coal, power plant, atmospheric

Path 3: Atmospheric, Oceanic, Atmospheric

4. Explain: Based on the Gizmo, explain how the following transitions might take place:

A. Describe at least two ways that carbon can get from a land plant to the atmosphere.

1. Land animals

2. Forest Fires

B. Describe at least two ways that carbon can get from the atmosphere to the hydrosphere.

1. Dissolve in cold so it surface waters anyway. Large bodies of water already

have a concentration of carbon dioxide.

2. When carbon dioxide dissolves in rainwater which later reacts with minerals
in rocks. They get carried away by rivers or streams into bigger bodies of
water.

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 C. Can you find two ways that carbon can get from the ocean to the lithosphere? (The lithosphere is
the rigid layer of the Earth, including the crust and part of the mantle.)

1. Carbon is compressed into a rock and sometimes fossil fuels and oils.

2. Ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from atmosphere which is in the shell of

animals.

D. Describe at least two ways that carbon can get from seashells to the atmosphere.

1. Through limestone, lithosphere, volcano, atmosphere

2. Oceanic co 2m, Marine animals, Plants sediments, Natural gas, Power

plants, and then atmospheric co2

Activity B: Get the Gizmo ready:

Human activities ● Click Reset.

Introduction: Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, formed over millions of years from the remains
of ancient plants and animals. The burning of fossil fuels, as well as other human activities, increases the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Question: How does human activity affect the carbon cycle?

1. Describe: Using the Gizmo, determine how coal and petroleum (oil) are formed. Describe the steps
required to form each fuel from atmospheric CO2.

Coal: Land plants, coal Land plants use atmosphere, plant material is pressed and
heated and transformed into coal.

Petroleum: Oceanic, Marine plants, Sediment, Petroleum, ocean to atmosphere to marine

plants to marine animals to sediment

2. Explore: Natural gas is a mixture of methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6), and other gases. Find two ways that
natural gas forms. List the steps of the two carbon pathways below:

Path 1:

Path 2:

How is the formation of natural gas related to the formation of coal and petroleum?

3. Describe: Fossil fuels are used in many ways. Using the Gizmo, describe the main use for each fuel.
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 Coal: Fossil fuel carbon

Petroleum: Extracted from wells

Natural Gas: Explosives

In each case, what is the end product of burning the fossil fuel, and where does it go?

They release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

4. Explore: Another major contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is the cement industry. Using the Gizmo,
find a carbon atom path from the atmosphere to the cement plant. (Hint: One of the ingredients in cement is
limestone.)

Path ocean, corals, limestone, cement

How is carbon dioxide produced in a cement plant?

Limestone is heated releasing it into the atmosphere.

5. Analyze: Click Reset, then navigate to the Land animals. Select Atmospheric CH4.

A. How do land animals create methane? Bacteria break down in the guts to
produce methane

B. Humans raise large numbers of cattle for Increase CO2 in the atmosphere
food. How will these herds of cows affect
Earth’s atmosphere?

6. Analyze: In many tropical rainforests, people clear land by cutting down trees and burning them. After a few
years, the soil runs out of nutrients and cannot be farmed any longer. How does this practice of “slash and
burn agriculture” affect Earth’s atmosphere?

7. Draw conclusions: In general, how do many human activities influence the carbon cycle?

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 Activity C:
Get the Gizmo ready:
Modeling the ● Select the MODEL tab.
carbon cycle

Introduction: Humans have been burning fossil fuels rapidly for the past 250 years. As a result, the amount of
atmospheric CO2 has increased by about 40% since the year 1800. By measuring how much carbon moves
into and out of the atmosphere, scientists can predict the change in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide
every year.

Question: How can we model changes in atmospheric carbon over time?

1. Observe: The MODEL tab shows a simplified model of the carbon cycle. The ovals represent carbon
reservoirs, where carbon is stored. The unit “GtC” stands for gigatonnes of carbon, where one GtC is
equal to one trillion kilograms of carbon. The arrows represent how much carbon moves from one reservoir
to another each year, in gigatonnes per year.

A. Look at the arrows pointing toward

atmospheric CO2. What are the two major
sources of atmospheric carbon?

B. A carbon sink is a location that stores

carbon for a long period of time. Which two
carbon sinks remove carbon from the
atmosphere?

C. Without changing the Gizmo, list the carbon

reservoirs from largest to smallest.

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 Note: The largest carbon reservoir is actually Earth’s lithosphere, which contains about 80,000 GtC.
However, there is not much exchange between the lithosphere and the other reservoirs on short
time scales.

2. Experiment: If necessary, click Return to original settings. These settings approximate present-day
conditions, but should not be taken as exact values.

A. What is the total amount of carbon removed

from the atmosphere each year by the
ocean and land plants?

B. What is the total amount of carbon added to

the atmosphere from soil and the burning of
fossil fuels?

C. How much will atmospheric carbon change 1 year -

in one year? 10 years -
100 years -

3. Calculate: Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that helps to trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere. We need
some CO2 in the atmosphere to maintain a warm planet, but excess carbon can cause considerable
warming of the planet.

A. What fossil fuel usage will result in no

change in atmospheric CO2 each year?

B. What percentage decrease in fossil fuel

usage is required to achieve this goal?

4. Experiment: Using the Gizmo model, explore the following questions:

A. How does increasing plant biomass

(amount of plants) affect atmospheric CO2?

B. How does increasing oceanic CO2 intake

affect atmospheric CO2 and oceanic CO2?

As carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, the ocean becomes slightly more acidic. This could make it
harder for many organisms to build their shells and skeletons. The consequences of ocean acidification are
not yet fully understood.

5. Infer: Click Reset and Return to original settings. Suppose we completely stopped burning fossil fuels
immediately. How many years would it take to return to atmospheric CO2 levels from the year 1800, about
600 GtC? Use the Gizmo to find the answer.

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6. Think about it: Since hard-shelled organisms evolved about 550 million years ago, billions of tons of
limestone rock have been produced from their shells. Limestone is made of calcium carbonate, with the
formula CaCO3.

Based on this, how do you think the amount of atmospheric CO2 has changed in the last 550 million years,
and how has this affected Earth’s climate? Explain your answer.

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