Delivering Power to the People

This unit introduces students to the concepts of energy, energy transformation, conservation of energy, and the generation of electricity. Focus words for the unit are transformation, generate, power, fuel, efficiency, conservation, charge, and current.

Activities

Scene: Pedal Power

Cooper, Olivia, and Hamza discuss some new equipment they saw in P.E. class, exercise bikes!

Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

Lesson: More About Power—Biking Uphill

Students crunch the numbers for biking uphill to learn more about power.

Duration: Approximately 60 minutes

Lesson: Energy Transformations

Students think through how energy flows through systems.

Duration: Approximately 60 minutes

Lesson: Electricity Generation

Students learn how generators make electricity in this illustrated guide that goes from the development of an early electrical generator to modern-day power plants and solar panels.

Duration: Approximately 70 minutes

Conversation: Power Priorities

Students graph data about New York City's electricity supply, then debate related trade-offs. They apply facts about power plants to their everyday life and present and/or write persuasive essays on their position.

Duration: Approximately 60 minutes

Teacher Tune-ups

• What is “power” mean when talking about work and energy?
• What exactly is electricity?
• How do generators create electricity?
• What is energy transfer?

Student View of Visuals and Activities

Some teachers prefer to have students view the slides and other visual assets in this unit directly instead of projecting them in class. Below is a web page to share with students with links to some of same items that are within in the teacher lesson plans, but without the explanatory text for the teacher.

 

• Student Links to Unit E3 Slides and Other Visuals

Original SciGen Unit

This unit has been adapted from "8.3 Delivering Power to the People" in the Word Generation program led by Catherine Snow (Harvard University) through a SERP collaboration with the Boston Public Schools and other districts in Massachusetts and Maryland.

PDFs of that earlier unit's teacher and student editions are available at the Science Generation Download Center.

transformation

noun – when studying energy, the change from one form of energy to another

Hydroelectric dams are one place where an energy transformation occurs. Can you describe it?

generate

verb – to produce

Electricity can be generated from the energy of flowing water. What else generates electricity?

power

noun – work done in a certain amount of time (joules per second if the power is measured in watts)

Does it take more power to pedal up a hill slowly or quickly? Why?

fuel

noun – the material that is used up to produce power

Fuels store energy. How is food a fuel? How is gasoline a fuel?

efficiency

noun – the ratio of the useful work performed by a device to the total amount of energy it uses

How does technology improve your efficiency at completing schoolwork?

conservation

noun – the idea that the total value of energy stays constant in a system

Considering the conservation of energy, what happens to the energy that goes into a car crash?

charge

noun – a property of matter responsible for electric and magnetic forces

When is matter considered charged?

current

noun – the flow of electricity

How do batteries create an electric current?