The Carbon Footprint of the Human Race

By Owen Ooi, 8th grade Math Student, ISKL

How does one save electricity? Over the course of this past year, starting from the month of August to April, Owen Ooi, (8th grade math student, ISKL) has been working on answering that big question. Easy, simple steps can be taken to minimize the wastage of electricity, especially in todays society where the use of energy is essential to our everyday lives. Continuing his familys already conservative nature, Owen and his family constantly reminds each other to turn off their lights, unplug chargers and turning off electrical outlets, and completely switching off their electrical appliances whenever they are not in use. Similarly, theyve also cut down on the usage of their oven, as it takes up a lot of energy every time it gets used, and have also started washing fuller loads over a slightly longer period of time instead of separating the clothes to wash every day to reduce the use of washing machines. Likewise, the air conditioner has been turned up to a warmer temperature, to scale down the use of the air conditioner, and turn off the water boiler as much as possible. As shown in the graphs fitted line, which shows that the usage of electricity is slowly going down, we can conclude that simply turning off whatever electrical appliance that isnt needed is an effective way to save electricity: dont use what you dont need. The equation for the fitted line in this graph is . To find the equation for the fitted line, y= (as per equation format) the slope, which would be , and in this case, ,

multiplied by x as per equation format, plus 1121, which would be the Y intercept. Looking at the graph, and the equation for the fitted line, my prediction is that it would take around 31 months (or two years and seven months) to have their energy consumption to reach 300kwh per month. To figure that out, take the equation for the fitted line, and replace Y with 300, our desired amount of energy used per month., then solve the equation to find out how many months it will take to make Owens familys monthly electricity usage to 300KwH per month.

Equation for Fitted line: 371 = + 1121 14 Home Electricity Usage (in KwH) Month KwH per month August 1121 September 621 October 775 November 1077 December 793 January 983 Febuary 883 March 775 April 671