4TH OF MAY 2013

Human Impact on the Environment

Written by Claire Ng
A huge part of our lives today is electricity. Humans today always depend on electricity as it has made our lives so much easier, we just cant imagine life without it. There are electrical products everywhere now. Everywhere you look, you would most likely see one. You see them on the street when you pass by a traffic light or a lamp-post, you see them at home when you see your computer or your phone or even your lights, you see them in school, in malls, even the bathrooms! Life has gotten a lot easier and more advanced for us. Now just to get some light to be able to see when its dark all we have to do is flip a switch. However the effects of all this electricity use have gone unnoticed by us. Almost all of these electrical products come from fossil fuel, which is non-renewable energy. The carbon dioxide that we are releasing in to the atmosphere causes the harmful effects to damage our planet. Earth is warming up extremely quickly; therefore extreme weather changes are now happening all around the world. We still have time to try to prevent further damage from happening to our planet, however it will only be possible if everyone does his or her part. One of the huge issues that we are currently faced with is the constant need for everyone to use an electrical device. Everywhere I go, I see someone with either a phone or an iPod or a computer or any other sort of electrical device. Not only does it affect our bodies and our health but because we use electrical devices all the time, its just adding more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If more and more people start to become aware of how much we are using and only use what is necessary, we will definitely see a change. Im not saying that you have to cut down on all your electrical products, because obviously at this stage, its going to be extremely difficult but if we all try to cut down just a little bit, it will already make a difference.

THE LOREM IPSUMS

SUMMER 2016

I noticed that Im also not very aware about how much electricity I use. So I have decided to make a change. It seems like it will be a little hard conserving some electricity, like youre sacrificing some of the better things in life but every little thing makes a difference. I focused some simple things at home so that I could do my part of conserving electricity. First of all, my family decided to maybe turn the AC up to a higher temperature like 23 instead of 16 all the time. Then we decided that if we were going to stay in a room for a long time and it was really hot. You could leave the AC on at 18 for the first 10 minutes then switch it up to 24 . We also decided that we should use less electronic devices at the same time. For example if were all watching TV together, but my brother is also on his computer, and my parents are on their phones and Im on my iPad, then we should cut it down. If no one is watching the TV then just turn it off or if one of us doesnt really have to use our electronic device then just put it away. Another thing that we decided to do was to turn off the lights and the AC when were not in the room. Sometimes when were in a room and then we want to go into another room to see whats going on and so you think to yourself Oh Ill be right back so I dont have to turn everything off but then you get sidetracked like if you see something really interesting in the next room and you forget about the lights and the AC that is still on. And my family tends to do that a lot. So we decided that we would always turn them off when we arent in the room. And our final step was to just use less technology. That way not only is it conserving electricity, you also get to bond more with your family members, which in my case, we dont get a lot of that. These were some of the small steps that we took to try to conserve energy. I recorded our progress every month basis in a table so that I could check on how we were doing.

During the first few months, we struggled a little. We kept forgetting about the project and we had to constantly remind each other about turning off the lights and the AC. However as you can see, we definitely improved on how much electricity we used because we got more used to remembering to turn off the lights and stuff. And we had a little jump up in March because we had some guests over for a week.

THE LOREM IPSUMS

SUMMER 2016

Using the data that I collected in the table, I made a graph to visually represent the data. I also added in a fitted line so that it would be easier to see the pattern. Fortunately the fitted line shows a negative correlation, which means that my family has decreased our usage of electricity.

The goal is to get our electricity usage down to 300KwH a month. If I follow the fitted line till it reaches 300 on the y-axis on an extended graph, I would be able to see how many months it would take for me to get to 300KwH. So instead of me graphing it all out, I decided to take a shortcut. First I found the slope of the line by choosing two coordinates. Then I used the equation y2-y1/x2-x1 to get the slope. And so -27 is the slope

Then I put that all into slope intercept form, which is y=mx+b. And then I plugged in -27 for m because thats the slope. 2127 for b because thats the vertical intercept and I plugged in 300 for y because thats the amount of electricity I want to use per month and then I just have to solve for x, which is the amount of months that it will take.

So now I know that from now it will take 60 more months (5 years) for me to reach my goal and 68 more months (5 years 8 months) after August, when I first started.

My family and me have done such simple things to achieve this. Its not a lot of work; it just takes some time getting sued to it. So do YOUR part in conserving electricity. And remember every little step counts, no matter how small it is.
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