Coal plant
Burns coal fuel. It needs a continuing supply to keep running.
Lesson
Renewable and Nonrenewable Resources
Driving Question
As a city grows, must its resource use and environmental impacts grow too? How could technology change what happens?
🔬 Learning Science Focus
🔍 Phenomenon First
🧠 Chunked Content
🪜 Stepwise Scaffolds
✅ Retrieval Practice
⚖️ Argument from Evidence
Learning Goals
What You'll Be Able to Do
I can tell renewable from nonrenewable resources, and explain why renewable does not mean unlimited.
Review
I can explain how population and average use per person together set a city's total demand.
7.MS-ESS3-4
I can use historical evidence to argue how a technology could reduce water demand as population grows, and name a limitation.
7.MS-ESS3-4
📚 Instructional Design
Massachusetts 7.MS-ESS3-4 (current 7.ESS.3.4) is the target: construct an argument supported by evidence that human activities and technologies can mitigate impacts of population growth and per-capita consumption. Massachusetts 4.ESS.3.1 resource classification and 5.ESS.3.1 community practices are prerequisite review. Reading or clicking does not demonstrate the Grade 7 performance; the final written argument is its primary evidence and requires teacher review.
Vocabulary to Know
Words You'll Meet
Choose a card to see what each word means.
Resource
A material or energy source people use.
Renewable
Supplied by ongoing natural energy flows, or replenished by natural processes on human timescales.
Nonrenewable
A finite supply that natural processes do not replenish on human timescales, such as fossil fuels or uranium.
Per Capita
Per person. Here it is a citywide average: total daily water use divided by population.
Consumption
The amount of a resource used. The NYC data report water used, not water destroyed.
Efficiency
Providing the same service with less of a resource, such as less water per flush.
Conservation
Reducing resource use or waste through practices, such as fixing leaks.
Mitigation
Reducing an impact or its severity. It does not mean removing every impact.
Evidence
Observations, measurements, or documented findings used to support or challenge a claim.
📚 Instructional Design
Pre-teach the terms students need to read the evidence. Per capita and consumption carry the data reading; efficiency, conservation, and mitigation carry the argument. One card opens at a time.
Engage · Phenomenon
Two Ways to Power a City
Solar panels
Convert incoming sunlight. Output changes with time of day and weather.
Think
A city keeps growing. Must its resource use grow too? Make your prediction before continuing. What measurements over time could test it?
📚 Instructional Design
Elicit a prediction and a proposal for evidence without revealing the final argument. The electricity scene opens a resource-use question; the historical case investigates freshwater demand.
Explore · Quick Review
Renewable or Nonrenewable?
Nonrenewable
Finite supplies. Natural processes do not replenish them on human timescales.
Examples coal, petroleum, natural gas, uranium
Renewable
Ongoing energy flows, or supplies that natural processes replenish.
Examples sunlight, wind, flowing water, Earth's heat, biomass, freshwater
Renewable does not mean unlimited local availability or no environmental impacts.
Using sunlight does not make tomorrow’s sunlight arrive faster or slower. But a supply such as freshwater or biomass can run short in one place if it is used faster than it is replenished.
📚 Instructional Design
Classification supports the investigation; it is not the Grade 7 argument performance. The one caveat distinguishes energy flows from replenishable supplies, and renewability from sustainable local use.
Explore · Energy Sources
Where the Energy Comes From
Nonrenewable fuels
Fossil fuels form over millions of years, but not all through the same pathway.
- Ancient land plants
- Burial and compaction
- Geologic change over millions of years
- Coal
- Remains of microscopic aquatic organisms
- Sediment burial
- Heating and geologic change over millions of years
- Petroleum and natural gas
Natural gas can also form in other ways.
Nuclear: Uranium is a finite, mined resource, so nuclear energy is nonrenewable. Uranium is not a fossil fuel.
Renewable sources
Choose a source.
Solar
Panels capture incoming energy from sunlight. Available sunlight changes with time of day and weather.
📚 Instructional Design
Supporting science only. Two simplified fossil-fuel pathways, one nuclear line, and a five-source selector (what is captured plus one limit) replace separate mini-lessons. None of this is a geology or reactor assessment.
Explore · The Model
Population, Average Use, and Total Demand
Cities depend on several natural resources. We will examine a real water-use record to investigate how population, use per person, and technology interact.
Number of people
Average water use per person each day
Total water use each day
people × gallons/person/day = gallons/day
Worked example: NYC, 2010
8,175,133 × 127.09 ≈ 1,039,000,000 gallons/day
≈ because the per-person figure is rounded.
- Both numbers can change. More people increase total use if average use stays the same. Lower average use can offset population growth; the size of both changes matters.
- It is an average. Per capita use covers all city uses, not only homes, so it is not identical individual behavior. Water used and environmental damage are also not identical quantities.
📚 Instructional Design
Use the units and a worked example without requiring algebra. The population denominator distributes aggregate city water consumption; it is not a measurement of every resident’s personal behavior.
Explore · The Evidence
Case Study: New York City Water
Study each piece of evidence, then answer the questions beside it.
Evidence A Water use over time
Historical data| Year | Population (people) | Average use per person (gallons/person/day) | Total consumption (million gallons/day) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 7,335,650 | 194.09 | 1,423.8 |
| 2000 | 8,008,278 | 154.89 | 1,240.4 |
| 2010 | 8,175,133 | 127.09 | 1,039.0 |
1990
- Population (people)
- 7,335,650
- Average use per person (gallons/person/day)
- 194.09
- Total consumption (million gallons/day)
- 1,423.8
2000
- Population (people)
- 8,008,278
- Average use per person (gallons/person/day)
- 154.89
- Total consumption (million gallons/day)
- 1,240.4
2010
- Population (people)
- 8,175,133
- Average use per person (gallons/person/day)
- 127.09
- Total consumption (million gallons/day)
- 1,039.0
Source: NYC DEP / NYC Open Data, Water Consumption in the City of New York. Per-person values rounded to two decimals.
Think: Investigate before making a claim
- What place, years, quantities, and units does Evidence A describe?
- What patterns do you notice across the three years?
- Which direction did population and average use per person move?
- What happened to total daily consumption? Use specific values.
Check your reading
Population up about 11.4%
Average use per person down about 34.5%
Total consumption down about 27.0%
1990 to 2010, calculated from Evidence A. Only three years were measured, so these numbers do not show what happened in between. How can total use fall while population grows?
Evidence B The water supply
ContextNYC’s freshwater comes through a supply system of reservoirs, lakes, and aqueducts. Total water demand measures use of that supply. Lower demand can reduce pressure on the supply; it does not itself measure water quality, ecological damage, or reservoir recovery.
Context: NYC DEP, Drinking Water.
Think
- What does total consumption tell you about demand on the supply? What does it not measure?
Evidence C A documented program
Reported finding1994–1997 Toilet Rebate Program
≈ 1.3 million toilets replaced
≈ 90 million gallons/day in DEP-reported reduced consumption attributed to the program
Newer toilets use less water per flush for the same service. DEP’s figure is an approximate program savings estimate; this was not a controlled experiment.
Source: NYC DEP, Water Conservation Report - Annual Update, June 2011, page 15.
Think
- What can DEP’s finding establish, and what would go beyond it?
- Which values and findings would matter to a town considering water-efficient toilets?
Check your thinking
Supported: water-efficient toilets can help reduce freshwater demand.
Not established: The program did not necessarily cause the entire 1990–2010 decline. Other conservation and system-management changes also occurred, including metering and hydrant management. These findings do not establish improved water quality, ecosystem recovery, reservoir increases, or identical future savings in another town.
📚 Instructional Design
Evidence interpretation: preserve the frozen values rather than replacing them with a later dataset vintage. Per-capita figures are aggregate averages. DEP’s approximate program savings are an attribution from its report, not a controlled estimate of the entire trend. Questions sit beside each evidence piece; the two reveals check data reading (endpoint percentages calculated from the three rows) and causal limits after students answer. No model argument is supplied before submission.
Explore · Argument Practice
Choose Your Evidence
For a claim about changes in average water use, which evidence is relevant?
Select one.
What would help a town estimate its own toilet-replacement savings?
Select one.
Get ready to make your argument
- Claim
- Evidence
- Reasoning
- Limitation
Think about what the NYC evidence shows and what it does not prove.
📚 Instructional Design
These short choices check relevance and missing information; they are not themselves constructed arguments. Evaluate the collected response for claim, evidence, reasoning (including population × use per person and the efficiency mechanism), and limitation, without prescribing a viewpoint.
Quick Recall
Pause and Retrieve
Answer from memory first, then show the answer.
Quick Recall · 1 of 3
How is a per-person average different from a city total?
Show answer
The city total is all the water the city uses each day. The per-person average divides that total by the population.
Quick Recall · 2 of 3
How is a claim different from a measurement used as evidence?
Show answer
A claim is what you argue. A measurement is an observation that can support or challenge it.
Quick Recall · 3 of 3
Why does a mitigation argument need a link between a change and its effect?
Show answer
Two changes at the same time do not show that one caused the other. A mechanism explains how the change could reduce the impact.
Explain
Return to Your Prediction
Think
Would you keep or revise your original prediction? What evidence changed or strengthened your thinking?
Evaluate · Quiz
Check Your Understanding
Ten questions check your knowledge and data reading. Then write your argument below and submit both. Your teacher reviews the argument.
Your score will not be sent
Your score will be sent to your teacher
0 / 10 selected
🧠 Show Your Thinking
A town expects its population to grow and is considering replacing older toilets with water-efficient toilets. Using Evidence A–C, construct an argument about whether and how this technology could reduce demand on freshwater supplies as the town serves more people. Include: Explain what happened to NYC’s population, average water use per person, and total water demand between 1990 and 2010. Cite at least two specific pieces of evidence, including the historical data and DEP’s finding about the replacement program. Explain how the evidence supports your claim. State one thing this evidence cannot establish about the town.
Use enough evidence and reasoning to fully support your claim.
Sentence starters (optional)
- My claim is…
- Evidence A shows…
- DEP reported…
- This supports my claim because…
- This evidence cannot tell us…
Your work is not autosaved. Keep this page open until your submission is confirmed.
One possible argument. Compare it with your own.
Replacing older toilets could help a growing town reduce freshwater demand. NYC’s population increased from 7,335,650 in 1990 to 8,175,133 in 2010, while average daily use fell from 194.09 to 127.09 gallons/person/day and total demand fell from 1,423.8 to 1,039.0 million gallons/day. Lower average use more than offset the population increase in this case. DEP reported that its 1994–1997 program replaced approximately 1.3 million toilets and reduced consumption by approximately 90 million gallons/day. Using less water per flush can lower average use and therefore demand on freshwater supplies. Other changes also occurred, so the program does not explain the entire decline. These findings cannot predict the town’s exact savings without information about its fixtures, use, and future population. They also do not establish improved water quality.
📚 Instructional Design
Actual student performance: review the argument for a defensible claim, accurate historical and program evidence, population × per-person reasoning, a mitigation mechanism, and an appropriate limitation. The selected-response score does not automatically evaluate the argument. Historical revision routes preserve their quiz content but use current instruction and the current writing prompt.
Your score checks knowledge and data interpretation. Your argument needs teacher review; a perfect score does not establish mastery of the entire Massachusetts standard.
Go Further
More Learning
New York City is one case. To estimate its own savings, a town would need its current fixtures, water use, and expected population. Which would change your argument most?
More Coming Soon
The lesson is just the beginning. More investigations, simulations, and challenges are coming soon.
Coming Soon
📚 Instructional Design
Optional transfer after the core task. Additional investigations are not promised by this page.
Connections
Connections
The resources we power our lives with connect to energy itself, the carbon cycle, and the choices that shape the planet. These lessons show how.
Forms of Energy
Before a fuel, a sunbeam, or a gust of wind becomes electricity, it is energy in one form. Knowing those forms helps distinguish stored energy from incoming energy flows.
Energy Transfer
A power plant or a solar panel is really a chain of energy moving from one place to another. See how that transfer turns a resource into usable power.
The Carbon Cycle
Coal, oil, and gas hold carbon that took millions of years to bury. See where that carbon goes once we burn nonrenewable fuels to release it.
Human Impacts on Ecosystems
Which resources we use, and how fast, is one of the biggest choices shaping the planet. See how those choices ripple out through living systems.