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Summary:
Human population, land use, the extraction of resources, and pollution have all been increasing. To understand how overpopulation is linked to the environmental crisis, one must understand how populations grow. In this experiment, students used dice to model human population growth. They started with a population of six dice. Then they rolled the dice. Rolling a “1” meant that person died and must be removed from the population. Rolling a “5” or a “6” meant that person had a child, and one die must be added to the population. After adding the births and subtracting the deaths, students then took their new population of dice and rolled again. They played the game for twenty rounds and the results were surprising. By the end of a game most students had a population of well over 100 dice. And therein lies part of human overpopulation problem. Exponential growth happens very, very fast.

Resources:
June 13 – Overpopulation Lab (pg718).docx