Grade Level: 9th
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A Study of Alternative Fuels
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The Farmer’s Dilemma
Over the course of the previous six labs, the students are exposed to alternative power systems focusing on hydrogen and electricity. This last structure combines all the knowledge students armed themselves with into a comprehensive presentation regarding the future of farming in our area… specifically that of fuels the farm tractor will use to harvest…
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The Cycle Analyst
Students will use a Cycle Analyst to collect data from an electric go-kart and measure the efficiency of the system. The Cycle Analyst can be used on other small electric vehicles such as electric bicycles, scooters and golf carts.
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Hydrogen Cars
Students will discover some properties of Hydrogen and how a PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) operates. They will work to create their own hydrogen kit car and experiment by measuring its gas production, power output if the fuel cell, and the power requirements for operating the vehicle for one minute.
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Creating an Hydrogen Generator
Students will discover some properties of Hydrogen. They will work to create their own hydrogen generator and experiment by measuring its gas production and amperage used for production.
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Creating an Electric Motor
Students will discover some properties of electromagnets. They will create their own electric motor and measuring its torque by picking up a weight over a given distance and time. With this motor, they will learn how an electric motor works and to troubleshoot for optimum operation.
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Creating an Electromagnetic Field
Student teams will work together to discover properties of electromagnets. They will work together to create their own electromagnets and experiment its strength to pick up paperclips using batteries of varying voltages. With this experiment, they will also learn about series and parallel circuits. Later lessons will require the use of these electromagnets to create…
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Electrical Engineering: Why Does the Electrical System Break Down?
This unit, developed through the Ambitious Science Teaching framework, attempts to create cohesive, model-based learning experience for high school level physics students to explore these concepts through the anchoring event of a power outages. They will explore our electrical system from simple circuits and the function of a switch, tracing the electrical energy back through…
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How Does Energy Affect Wildlife?
In this lesson, students learn that different electricity generation sources have very different effects on wildlife. This is a teacher recommended lesson by KidWind.
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Clean Water Power: Wind, Waves, and Moving Water
This unit strives to answer the question: “How can the power of moving help communities by generating electricity?” Through a variety of lessons centered on the phenomena of the power of moving water, students will develop skills in circuits, model building, and testing. Students will explore issues surrounding clean water, energy, and careers.
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Careers in Renewable Energy
Students create a trading card about a career in renewable energy that interests them. Students can also explore different careers in Hydropower through a “Hydropower Careers Guess Who” game.
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Exploring Different Forms of Water Power
Students will build a model of a Marine Wave Generator (Kidwind Offshore Floating Wind Buoy, NEED’s Model Wav Generator Buoy, or Air Buoy) and test it to collect data and observe how water power is converted into electricity.
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Where is the Clean Water Around Me?
This lesson has students use hydropower, wave power, and wind power mapping tools to map the renewable resources around them on a large classroom map of their region, state, or North America.
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Social, Emotional, and Equity Discussions in Clean Water Power
This lesson has students jigsaw a bank of readings on the social, environmental, and equity issues with clean water power in order to make sense of how water power impacts the environment and people. Additionally, students will explore energy sovereignty and tribal energy independence in the Pacific Northwest to learn about how hydropower has impacted…
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How Do Variables Affect Power Generation in a Hydroelectric Dam?
This lesson has students make a claim on which configuration will generate the most power in an in-class water power demonstration: Height of water in a bucket (reserve), Length of Penstock, or Height difference between penstock and inline generator. Students then test the variables and collect data. Finally, students compare results with classmates’ and develop…
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What Does it Take to Make a Functioning Circuit
This lesson takes students through different hands-on and virtual circuit-building activities in order to make sense of the essential question: What does it take to make a functioning circuit?
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Electromagnetic Induction
This lesson builds on students’ prior knowledge about how electricity works. Students build a simple motor and test the voltage produced.
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Moving Water Into Moving Electrons
Students explore the power of water phenomena through videos of moving water then create a driving question board around how the power of moving water can be used to generate electricity. Students are introduced to the concept of hydroelectric power through content exploration and discussion.
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Optimal and Sustainable: Renewable Energy Revamp
In this lesson, students will be challenged with an optimization problem. The fictitious town of Solutionville has decided to replace coal, their current source for electricity, with more sustainable energy sources. In designing Solutionville’s sustainable energy future, students must consider not only the geographic constraints of various renewable energy options–wind energy, hydroelectric power, geothermal energy,…
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Creating a Hydroelectric Powerplant
Students will discover a relationship between amperes and voltage to Watts as a hydro-electric powerplant produces electricity. They will work as a team to create a powerplant and measure the flow and force of electricity. The variables of air pressure will simulate different head pressures as it pertain to simple water dam design. They will…
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Robotic Sunflower
Students will build electronics and programming knowledge to build a robotic sunflower which tracks the sun. Students will utilize multimeter readings, understanding resistors and circuits to program the multi-axis movement with Basic Stamp.
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Integrating Solar Power
In this lesson, students will integrate a photovoltaic module into an ongoing robotic sunflower that will track the sun with 2 degrees of freedom.
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Dual Axis Light Tracking
In this lesson, students will take a light tracker with two degrees of freedom. The axis of rotation will be about the horizontal and vertical.
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Creating a Light-Tracking Servo
In this lesson, students will synthesize their Basic Stamp controlled Servo (see previous lesson in unit) for light metering and Servo control. This lesson walks students through the process of designing a Servo controlled by two photoresistors that track a light source.
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Controlling a Servo
In this lesson students will learn how to control a servo using the Basic Stamp. Then students will combine the photoresistor from the previous lesson with the servo to create a light controlled servo. It is recommended this lesson is used in sequence.
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Measuring Voltage Using A Microcontroller
In this lesson students will be introduced to series circuits, resistors, a photoresistor and a microcontroller. There’s a lot here, but it boils down to making a voltage divider circuit and measuring the voltage at different points. A second circuit includes an RC component. Teachers can edit this down to just a photoresistor if time…
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Wave Attenuator
Students will experiment with the basic concepts of motion to electrical energy transformation. Students start by building a series of models that demonstrate the interactions between magnetic and electric fields. Students then apply this background knowledge to design and optimize a solution for wave energy conversion using a wave attenuator (3 lessons).
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Testing a Tidal Wave Attenuator
Students will test the efficiency of the tidal wave attenuator models that they previously built. They will determine variables on their models they can manipulate, such as wire gauge and magnet strength, and measure the effects of manipulating this variable on the success of their design. They will report their findings in a presentation to…
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Building a Tidal Wave Attenuator
This lesson is designed to build upon investigations of electromagnetic energy by applying these phenomena to transfer the kinetic energy moving in waves to electricity by building a wave attenuator.
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Introduction to Electromagnetism
Through a series of goal-oriented activities and research, students will build physical models that demonstrate the interactions between magnetism and magnetic fields as well as interactions between magnetism and electric fields. Students will be challenged to engineer devices that: change a magnetic field using electricity, creating a magnet using electricity, and inducing a changing magnetic…
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Simple Solar Tracker Activity
Students will be shown a working example of a solar tracker and asked to replicate the design based on their observations (1-2 lessons).
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Methane to Music
Students explore the phenomena of a Ruben’s Tube powered by renewable gas to understand how humans impact the flow of carbon in earth’s atmosphere. The lessons include topics of decomposers in a food web, compost, municipal waste, the and the carbon cycle.
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Humans and a Low Carbon Future
Students summarize the knowledge gained throughout the unit to analyze the carbon responsibility of a stakeholder. They bring everything back to the phenomena of the Ruben’s Tube through completing a cartoon.
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Energy Justice and Renewable Fuels
Students will consider all the types of residences in their community. They are challenged to address these questions: “Can all people in this community, regardless of their home type access renewable energy if they want to?” “What are some of the barriers?” Utilizing MuddWatt kits as a power cell students will continue to explore access…
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Carbon Cycling and Human Impact
Students create a visual model of the carbon cycle with notation of carbon sinks and movement. They use this model to predict changes in carbon movement based on human activities.
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Local Policies on Waste Management
The provided framework will support students to think critically about what happens to waste with an emphasis on local waste management policies. This lesson utilizes the aid of a guest speaker or can be performed by student investigation with a pre-organized list of websites.
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What Happens to Waste?
Students will explore the trash pathways and connect this information to their local community. Students will create flowcharts of what happens to waste and how that process could be altered. Students will write a letter to to a waste handler. Students will explore biofuel careers and create jobs trading cards.
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Dissecting a Compost Bin
Students dissect a compost pile to understand the food web of invertebrates and microbes. Students will understand the phases of a compost pile as well as the contributing ecosystem that powers it’s changes.
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Exploring a Ruben’s Tube Through Sensemaking
Students explore topics that surround the phenomena of a Ruben’s Tube. They will explore how science and music intersect before diving into how renewable gas can be a product of soil microbes.
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Solar Battery Charging
Students will become familiar with circuits, cells, batteries, and photovoltaic cells, then plan, build, test, modify, and re-test a small solar battery charger designed to maintain batteries from a particular device.
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DC to AC to DC Efficiency
This lesson will continue to deal with efficiency of USB charging devices, but this time we will be using an inverter in order to create AC voltage from a battery pack, and then use a standard AC charger (what you would plug into the wall) to charge a USB device. Students will continue to use…
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Biolite – Fire to Phone Charging
This lesson continues to look at the efficiency of USB charging devices, but this time we will be using a commercially available camping stove that uses heat to create electricity in order to charge a phone. This is the Biolite stove that exploits the Peltier Junction in order to generate an electrical current. Students can…
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Activities and Assessment of Vocab and Units
This foundational and important lesson helps prepare students to efficiently collect energy data independently in the remaining sections of this unit as well as increase the longevity of the equipment used throughout. Additionally, students build their energy literacy aroud Circuitry, Electrical Energy, Energy Efficiency, Energy Fundamentals and associated units and formulas.
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Electrical Energy and Solar Module Efficiency
Students will check the effiency of solar modules using tools to obtain values that are commonly used evaluate energy efficiency of solar modules. Students will conduct their own research to derive the terms they will need to calculate a power/area ratio, and check that calculation with a pyranometer (if available). Calculations and practices that students…
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Phone Charger Efficiency
In this lesson students will explore the concept of efficiency, and how to take data in order to calculate the efficiency of various cell phone or USB charging circuits.
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Exploring Buck and Boost Converters
This lab uses a variety of voltage conversion devices to output 5 Volts, the requirements for a USB charger such as for a cell phone. Students will take data on these devices and calculate, graph and compare efficiencies of different devices. Devices used in this lab are buck converters, which lower the input voltage and…
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Designing a Solar Phone Charger
This is the culminating activity for the unit “Off the Grid.” Students will be given some restricted parameters around which to design a solar powered battery operated phone (or other USB device) charger. Included at the end of this lesson is a written assessment for the entire unit.
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Off the Grid: Energy Transformations and Efficiency
Students are led through the basics of complex circuit building, including the use of buck and boost converters, converting AC to DC and back, with the ultimate goal of designing and building a solar cell phone charger. Involves learning circuit diagramming and calculating efficiencies of various circuits and comparing based upon measurements (7 lessons).
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Illuminate Me: Merging Conductive Sewing, Technology, and Solar Power
Students will design and build a wearable circuit using a microcontroller and incorporating solar power into a wearable garment project by recharging NiMH batteries for a renewable energy battery pack. This lesson is great for a culminating project since it integrates three major components: sewing circuits with conductive thread, programmable hardware, and energy transformations using…
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Bioreactor Water Heating
Students are guided through the concepts of solar and biomass heating as well as water pumping to design a water pumping system that uses multiple technologies to avoid water freezing in winter.
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Bioreactor Water Circulation System
Together we explore the feasibility of using heated water in a bioreactor to circulate water through a trough or pipe system to outdoor water sources from freezing in the winter. This will be done by utilizing a solar water pump and a compost bioreactor. Additionally, students will explore whether such a system could be used…
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Compost Bioreactor Design
Students will research the science and proper maintenance of composting to create their own bioreactors. Using their research they will adjust their compost for maximum heat production used to heat water.
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Passive Solar Water Heating
Students will utilize milk jugs to understand the how to optimize the sun’s ability to heat the water contained within. By recording their observations and calculating the joules of energy absorbed students will gain understanding of the energy of the sun.
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Modeling a Wave Energy Converter
This teacher-designed hands-on engineering activity for grades 7-8 walks you through building a wave energy converter to explore how waves can be used for energy.