The AQ-IQ Contest for Seventh Grade Students has students creating a project on an air quality problem, looking for solutions to the problem, and creating a poster, on-line interactive, artist, or video project to educate others about the issue. Students will submit the projects and bibliographies using an on-line tool. The pest projects will be invited to a recognition ceremony and receive a prize package. Visit the AQ-IQ Landing Page for more information and resources: http://web.eenorthcarolina.org/resource/about.aspx?s=121764.0.0.37430

The AirData website provides access to air pollution data for the entire United States. Users have the ability to produce reports and maps of air pollution data based on criteria that they specify.

In this unit, students explore the various roles of environmental engineers, including: environmental cleanup, water quality, groundwater resources, surface water and groundwater flow, water contamination, waste disposal and air pollution. Specifically, students learn about the factors that affect water quality and the conditions that enable different animals and plants to survive in their environments. Next, students learn about groundwater and how environmental engineers study groundwater to predict the distribution of surface pollution. Students also learn how water flows through the ground, what an aquifer is and what soil properties are used to predict groundwater flow. Additionally, students discover that the water they drink everyday comes from many different sources, including surface water and groundwater. They investigate possible scenarios of drinking water contamination and how contaminants can negatively affect the organisms that come in contact with them. Students learn about the three most common methods of waste disposal and how environmental engineers continue to develop technologies to dispose of trash. Lastly, students learn what causes air pollution and how to investigate the different pollutants that exist, such as toxic gases and particulate matter. Also, they investigate the technologies developed by engineers to reduce air pollution.

When smoke from wildfires swirls around health care facilities, prepared hospitals in California and Colorado use air quality tools to keep the indoor environment safe for patients and staff.

Students capture and examine air particles to gain an appreciation of how much dust, pollen and other particulate matter is present in the air around them. Students place "pollution detectors" at various locations to determine which places have a lot of particles in the air and which places do not have as many. Quantifying and describing these particles is a first step towards engineering methods of removing contaminants from the air.

Through an overview of some of the environmental challenges facing the growing and evolving country of China today, students learn about the effects of indoor and outdoor air pollution that China is struggling to curb with the help of engineers and scientists. This includes the sources of particulate matter 2.5 and carbon dioxide, and air pollution impacts on the health of people and the environment.

Looking for lichens is an activity that can be done almost anywhere. Students get to search for them in the playgrounds and schoolyards, and they can be used as an indicator of air quality.

Students develop awareness and understanding of the daily air quality using the Air Quality Index (AQI) listed in the newspaper. They explore what engineers can do to help reduce poor air quality.