For class I was assigned a carbon project in where we select a tree and find out more about the carbon stored in the tree etc. I chose a tree in my backyard. It is about 365.76 cm tall with a circumfrance of 41.91 cm. It is a cherry tree and produces the most amazing cherries in the summer time!
Measurement Approximations:
Radius: 6.675
Volume: 51,197.484 cm3
Mass of wood : Will calculate at a later date
Mass of carbon: Will calculate at a later date (technical difficulities :) haha )
The next assignment was to figure out how many trees would be needed to take up the CO2 admitted by the gas from my car each year. I approximated that I drove about 10,000 miles a year. My car gets about 24 mpg and use about 240,000 gallons of gas a year. Which emits about 576,000kg of carbon a year! Each household in the United States is responsible for emitting 3700 Kg each year that means after multiplying that by the 100 million households in the U.S. there are 3,700,000,000 kg of carbon being emitted yearly and that is just by the United States alone. My carbon footprint ended up being around 16.34, which is less than the U.S. average. I feel as though the footprint which I leave is a lot more heavily weighted with certain things I do on a daily basis such as working out, watching tv, throwing garbage away etc. If I were to fill out a vary detailed carbon footprint, I am sure my numbers would be a lot higher, which makes me want to change my habits. It connects with what I have learned in class because we are constantly talking about ways in which people can reduce their footprint as a whole, but when I actually see the numbers in the impact I am having on the environment, that is when it becomes a reality that there is something that needs to change in order for me to succeed with being more environmentally friendly.
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