Population Growth.

  The other day as I sat in the lobby of the hotel, doing some people and bird watching, I wondered if I could present population growth in a slightly different way than normal.

Since I work in a small village with a population of between 900 and 1000 people population growth is not as evident. If school numbers are indicative of the population, it has been following a fairly circular increase and decrease, never going over a certain number.

I'd love to find enough information to have students calculate the population growth of the village but it has stayed pretty steady with the number of people who leave the village and those born. I'm not even sure where I'd find those numbers.

I know it is traditional to use bacteria or humans but I think for my students, if we did popular growth based on animals such as village dogs, moose, or other local animal, students might relate to these a bit more before I try to introduce human population growth.  In addition, it would be good to discuss what happened to that deer population when they removed the predators and the results.

Too often we teach population growth as if its nothing more than a mathematical equation or set of equations.  It's important to show students that as population increases,  there is an increased consumption of materials, production of trash, and an increased production of food with a decrease in available fertile land.

When we apply the formula to the growth of bacteria, we need to explain why it is important to know how to calculate this.  Ask students if an increase in bacterial population coincides with an increase in disease.  Do outbreaks follow the tendency for populations to outstrip the production of food and resources before declining?  Does consumption increase at the same pace as the growth of the population or is it faster?  

I'd love for students to understand that although the population is increasing right now, it is not increasing at the same rate equally around the world.  It would be nice to break down the daily increase to see where most of the growth occurs before having them venture guesses on why it happens that way.

This is one case where it is easy to show connections between population, consumption, food production, and how patterns of growth change. 

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.