ENERGY
DETECTIVES:
What are the Sources of Energy Used in Your Neighborhood?
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?
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Summary: In this activity students consider how
they use energy in their daily lives, and plan a survey of their
neighborhood's energy.
Classroom Management:
If your class has not had experience
with surveys, you will need to introduce the technique of surveys.
You can divide the survey work among
class members, by individuals or by team.
Activity Steps:
We have been talking about water
as an important natural resource. We can now consider other critical
resources, those which generate energy. Fossil fuels, nuclear,
and sunlight are our main sources of energy. Different regions
of the world use different kinds of energy. Canada, for example,
has a great of water to cool electric power plants, while Bahrain
has no water but has oil, a fossil fuel to burn. In many parts
of the world animals still pull plows and turn wheels that in
turn grind grain or life water.
1. Tracing energy conversions
to energy sources
What types of energy are used in
your neighborhood? Can you trace them back to the sources of
sunlight
, fossil fuel
, or nuclear energy?
If electricity is used, where did it comes from, how was it transported
to your neighborhood, and how long is that source predicted to
last?
Return to the original conversion
challenges of going down a playground slide and turning on a
light in your room.. Try to trace them back to their sources.
Check your ideas here.
2.
Make a survey of energy sources in your neighborhood.
Discover what kinds of energy sources
are used your neighborhood, and the user's opinions about how
long these resources will last.
Caution: We do not want students calling or entering
the houses of strangers. On the other hand, students could do
a telephone survey, calling local offices and stores, and could
gather information from their own home.
Survey
Form
Step 3. Enter the results of
the survey in the Linking
Up Villages Neighborhood , Neighborhood
Energy Survey, in the COMMONS, as
shown below.
Extensions:
1.
Find out: How
much energy do you use? Print out and take home this form
posted by the World Wildlife Fund
http://www.ase.org/educators/lessons/Exercise4.html
2. Find out: How
are energy resources distributed around the world? Who has a
large amount and who has a little?
3. Interview someone who is working
in providing cheaper, more sustainable energy to people.
Suggested
References:
Energy Ed On Line
http://www.energyed.ecw.org/
Student
site on coal
http://cyberkids.ccsd.k12.wy.us/mines/PR/pr.html
Energy Use in
the UK (country)
http://www.ecu.ox.ac.uk/eep/default.htm
Energy
Use in Norway (includes household and per capita)
http://viper.falch.no/htmljobb/fact94/kap04.htm
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