Walk before you plan
Leave the phone research for later. Walk your street or your school compound and look for one climate problem you could photograph: the gutter that overflows, the classroom block that becomes an oven, the corner where refuse blocks the drain before every flood.
One problem. The instinct to fix everything is how nothing gets fixed. The Lab trains the opposite instinct: pick something small enough to lose sleep over productively.
Count something
A complaint becomes a case when it carries a number. How many meters of gutter are blocked? How many minutes after rain does the street become impassable? What temperature does the classroom hit at 1pm? Waterline height on the wall, in centimeters, with a date under it.
You learned in CY-102 that unmeasured problems are invisible to budgets. So measure. A tape rule, a free thermometer app and a dated photo are a research kit.
Draw the boundary
Define exactly where your problem starts and ends: this street between these two junctions, this classroom block, this one drain. The boundary is what makes change provable, because you will measure inside it before and after.
Write the one-sentence version: 'On [street], between [A] and [B], rain of more than one hour makes the road impassable for about [N] hours because the drain at [point] is blocked.' If you can write that sentence with real values, lesson one is done.
Hold on to these
- One problem, chosen by walking, not scrolling.
- A complaint with a number and a dated photo is evidence.
- A drawn boundary is what makes improvement provable later.
Check yourself
No grades here. If you can answer these out loud, you own the lesson.
- 1.What problem did you pick, and what is its boundary?
- 2.What did you count, and what instrument did you use?
- 3.Write your one-sentence problem statement with real values.