Unit Plan: A Community Powered by Renewable Energy
In this three-part comprehensive place-based and project-based unit, students will learn and apply rebnewable energy content to devise action plans at an individual, family, and local level. Students will use primary and secondary research explore energy...
Part 1 - Lesson 1: Why Use Renewable Energy?
The purpose of this lesson is for students to obtain base knowledge of how renewable and non-renewable energy is generated and identify differences between renewable resources and fossil fuels. Students will research the potential long-term and short-term...
Unit Plan - Chemical Differences in Emergency Energy Sources
Students develop atomic and molecular models of energy resources, analyze combustion of various fuels and build circuits with Photovolatic (PV) modules to evaluate and suggest revisions to a disaster preparedness supply list. They then research and...
Fuels and PV Cells
Students will return to the phenomena of energy resources to support safety, health, and comfort in an emergency situation. They will distinguish between how common materials provide energy and develop an understanding of how the atomic and molecular...
Replacing Fossil Fuels?
As students begin to look at the role photovoltaics might play within the transportation energy sector, it is important for them to understand why the phasing-out of fossil fuels is such a daunting task. This lesson is designed to help students comprehend...
Background Research on Alternative Transportation Vehicles
Students completing this lesson will already have identified some of the problems inherent in the development of ideas to replace fossil fuels in the transportation sector. Students will now conduct some research to identify some of the pros and cons of...
Can Portable PV Charge Vehicles?
In this lesson, students will begin to explore the potential and challenges related to using photovoltaics to supplement the power needed to charge batteries in BEVs. Students will test a variety of wiring options related to series and parallel wiring....
Informative Writing: Where Does Energy Come From?
This lesson is a (stand alone or in-unit) guided non-fiction research and writing project, which includes a differentiated choice menu and list of ideas for publishing the completed project. Each student will choose one of ten energy sources to research,...
Unit Plan: Understand E-Waste Through Battery Design
In this lesson students will further explore their understanding of energy, electricity, and basic circuits. Students will begin their exploration of batteries by questioning where batteries end up when we are done using them, making connections to e-waste...
How might we design a battery that reduces e-waste? Phenomenon and Exploration
During this introduction lesson series students will explore the guiding phenomenon to understand e-waste and connect it to battery design. Students will utilize online resources to learn about problems from e-waste around the world and the environmental...