Providing some context to for Reading Comprehension items

The class recently completed -- most students did -- a Reading Comprehension article on the falling prices of oil.  Like a lot of the articles we use, I like to think they offer the students some insight into news items they may see.

One of the articles had to do with the dropping price of oil and it comes from What in the World publication (http://www.lesplan.com/).

One of the bits of information in the article refers to oil producing nations.  I found this graphic that will help contextualize how much oil is produced by some nations:

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graphic from:  http://flatrock.org.nz/static/frontpage/assets/news/large_world_oil_reserves.jpg

Here are a couple of other images relating to oil from http://classified-blog.com/photogms/gallons-in-a-barrel-of-oil.  These will offer some sense of what is in a barrel of oil and just how big a 42 gallon barrel is.

Not to scale.

An image from http://theiranproject.com/blog/2014/06/27/irans-2013-oil-export-likely-over-iea-estimates/oil-barrels-3/ from a news story on the production of oil not slowing down and the price of oil going down due to the decreased demand.

Considering that OPEC nations produce up to 30 000 000 000 barrels of oil/day, think about how bi a billion is:

Here is a video clip from the Math series we sometimes watch from Math Talk:

This is a very pro-oil friendly website that explains where oil comes from.  It is from the site in the UK:  http://www.ukoog.org.uk/knowledge-base/geology-kb/where-do-oil-and-natural-gas-come-from-and-how-is-it-formed

In my first year at AMG, there was a huge oil rig (where oil is extracted from under the ocean) disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.  This is one of the unfortunate things about our reliance on oil.

from the web page:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7816715/Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-timeline.html

A summary of the story can also be seen on this YouTube story: