Parts per Million: A Little Is a Lot

Positives

• The length of this video makes it readily usable for typical class times, making it easy to integrate into a variety of lessons.
  
• The explanations are understandable enough for younger students, and the concepts are subtle enough for older students to take deeper implications.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• Students need to understand multiplication, division, and powers of ten.

Differentiation

• There is more detailed information included in the examples (such as chemical formulas) that older students can use for practice with substrates, products, and converting units.
  
• Classes can replicate some of the examples in the video as a lab or do similar experiments to explore ppm.
• Biology classes can connect this topic to the evolutionary reason for our sense of smell being so powerful or why small differences in molecular weight can make a big difference in processes such as photosynthesis or cellular respiration for some organisms.
  
• Chemistry classes can examine why these small changes in greenhouse gas concentrations can make such a large difference in global climate conditions.
• Younger students can focus on the main ideas presented and use it as a guide for classroom lab experiments.