High school project idea · Environment & Sustainability
Measure how air conditions shift across time and place, then explain what the numbers can and cannot tell you.
Use public data or appropriate low-cost sensors to investigate a focused air-quality question and communicate findings responsibly.
Why this project matters
Use public data or appropriate low-cost sensors to investigate a focused air-quality question and communicate findings responsibly. This project feels different from a school assignment because the student serves students, athletes, families, or community members making daily activity decisions, creates something visible, tests it honestly, responds to feedback, and explains the decisions behind the final result.
What you will create
Use these deliverables as milestones for Investigate the Air You Breathe. Adapt the details to your interests, available time, and real-world opportunities.
Research pollutant type, sensor limits, calibration, weather, location, exposure versus ambient data, health guidance sources, and uncertainty. Document the needs, constraints, credible sources, and perspectives of students, athletes, families, or community members making daily activity decisions.
Turn the evidence into a focused plan for the local air-quality investigation and public guide, including success criteria, ethical boundaries, scope, and a realistic path to completion.
Create the first complete version of the local air-quality investigation and public guide. Include a research question, monitoring protocol, source and sensor notes, dataset, visual analysis, contextual interviews, public guide, and limitations.
repeat observations, compare with authoritative monitors, and test whether users understand the guidance without treating it as medical advice Record what happened, what failed, what users or reviewers said, and which changes you made.
Publish the final local air-quality investigation and public guide with a portfolio-ready case study showing the challenge, evidence, process, revisions, results, limits, and next version.
Make the work stronger
For Investigate the Air You Breathe, use these checkpoints to protect the quality of the work without turning the project into a performance for admissions.
Skills you can build
College application value
Can demonstrate initiative, curiosity, reflection, and growth through the student’s choices, response to setbacks, work with students, athletes, families, or community members making daily activity decisions, and development of Environmental Monitoring, Data Interpretation, and Risk Communication.
The goal of Investigate the Air You Breathe is not to manufacture an impressive activity. Do real work, keep evidence of the process, and reflect honestly on what changed.
Related college majors
Use Investigate the Air You Breathe as a clue, then open a related major guide to compare coursework, career directions, reality checks, and other ways to test the field.
Engineer practical systems that protect environmental and human health.
Investigate matter, reactions, measurement, and molecular change.
Look beyond one patient to ask how environments, systems, policy, and prevention shape the health of whole populations.
Investigate the Air You Breathe is an original Compass educational starting point designed around real work, visible evidence, feedback, and reflection. It is not an admissions guarantee.