Apply the engineering design process to define criteria and constraints, and design a method to monitor and reduce one specific human environmental impact at home.
This week begins a three-week design project applying everything from this unit: choosing one specific human impact at your own home, water use, energy use, or waste production, and designing a real method to monitor it and reduce it. Monitoring means measuring the impact in some real, repeatable way before making any changes, a water meter reading, a kilowatt-hour reading from an energy bill, or the weight or volume of a week's trash, so that any later change can be honestly compared against a real baseline.
As in week 8's design process, start by defining the problem precisely, choosing which impact to target and why, then set criteria, what the design must accomplish, like "reduce weekly water use by a measurable amount," and constraints, real limits like budget, time, or what the household is actually willing to change. A vague goal like "use less energy" is much harder to design for, and to test, than a specific one like "reduce nighttime device charging by turning off chargers not in use."
Mastery looks like: They can define a specific, measurable criterion for a real household impact, take an honest baseline measurement, and state a realistic constraint for their design.
Common stumbles: Skipping the baseline measurement and only measuring after the change; setting a criterion too vague to actually test.