This is the first of six PowerPoint population presentations. Most of us know that Earth's human population is growing, but this lesson QUANTIFIES that understanding (Each day, approximately 365,000 births minus about 147,000 deaths result in approximately 218,000 extra citizens -- daily). As students try to imagine the implications of 9,000 extra persons in the human population (each hour) they also solve this riddle: How long would it take for a student to complete 1 billion homework questions at a rate of 100 questions per night, 5 nights per week, 52 weeks per year? When they arrive at the answer (38,461 years to complete their assignment!), they are better prepared to consider the implications of one billion additional people inhabiting our planet........ every twelve years.

Living organisms have the capacity to produce populations of infinite size, but environments and resources are finite. Human beings live within the world's ecosystems. Increasingly, humans modify ecosystems as a result of population growth, technology, and consumption. Human destruction of habitats through direct harvesting, pollution, atmospheric changes, and other factors is threatening current global stability, and if not addressed, ecosystems will be irreversibly affected. Populations grow or decline through the combined effects of births and deaths, and through emigration and immigration. Populations can increase through linear or exponential growth, with effects on resource use and environmental pollution. Various factors influence birth rates and fertility rates, such as average levels of affluence and education, importance of children in the labor force, education and employment of women, infant mortality rates, costs of raising children, availability and reliability of birth control methods, and religious beliefs and cultural norms that influence personal decisions about family size. Populations can reach limits to growth. Carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals that can be supported in a given environment. The limitation is not the availability of space, but the number of people in relation to resources and the capacity of earth systems to support human beings. Changes in technology can cause significant changes, either positive or negative, in carrying capacity

This is a self-contained unit and students can complete the PowerPoint presentation itself by simply reading each slide and using the mouse to click through the slides of the program. The enrichment activities suggested below, if assigned, offer opportunities to enhance student skills using search engines, entering URLs to access internet information, developing graphs, tables and charts, preparing PowerPoint or multimedia presentations, etc.

Would you like your students to apply the understandings gained in this unit to the real world? Consider a follow-up project involving the following student research and activities: Assign student teams to research a nation and all its characteristics (economic, political, resources, wildlife, climate, language, employment, etc.) Then the students are to take on the following role: They have been hired by the government of that nation to develop policy recommendations to optimize, insofar as possible, employment, freedom, protection of the wildlife, genetic resources, and the environment, cultural diversity, standard of living, levels of education, and sustainability. (1) Student teams choose a nation and use internet and digital resources to identify its: current population, system of government, per capita income, number of births, annual rate of growth. (2) Have the teams prepare a map, graphs, and a computer or multimedia presentation on the nation selected, identifying its major mountains, rivers, natural resources, cities, natural areas, native wildlife species, national parks, languages, agricultural areas, historical developments to date, etc. (3) Students use their data to: (a) estimate and project future conditions in the nation over the next 30-50 years; (b) make policy recommendations that will feed, clothe, and educate its population, optimize standard of living, health, and employment, minimize waste and depletion of resources, minimize levels of pollution, and maintain the climatic, biological, and genetic integrity of its natural systems. (4) Each team presents its results to the class and identifies their top five policy recommendations, the rationale supporting those recommendations, and the costs and sources of funding associated with implementing the recommendations. (5) Finally, each team should identify two "alternative futures" for the nation: One future should presume that the recommended policies are adopted and implemented -- the second future should presume that the policies are not implemented and existing policies, conditions, and trends continue. You may find the following web-sites useful: www.census.gov and www.cia.gov

There is a self-quiz at the end of each PowerPoint lesson. Major terms and concepts are displayed, and an adjacent "command button" (coded in Visual Basic programming language) can be clicked by the student to check his or her answer. On-line worksheets will be available for students and instructors to access. Our questions can also be used as the basis of instructor-generated tests. Students can also be assessed on completion of their worksheets, participation in the PowerPoint, and unit self-quiz.

(1) Students click through PowerPoint lesson (27 slides). (2) Students answer worksheet items based on lesson information. (3) Students take "self-quiz" (see closing screens of the presentation). (4) Students take turns reading worksheet items aloud, and specify the correct answer to each item. (5) Class discussion and further research may follow at the option of the instructor.

Access to a computer that is connected to the Internet. You might want to check out the following sites which might be useful for your students: http://www.homeworkcentral.com/Top8/files.htp?fileid=70722&use=hc