In this short activity, students or groups are tasked to make concept sketches that track the source of electrical power as far back as they can conceive. The concept sketches reveal students' prior conceptions of the power grid and energy mix, and lead naturally into a lesson or discussion about energy resources and power production.
This video is one of a series from the Switch Energy project. It reviews the environmental impacts of various energy resources including fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables. CO2 emissions as a specific environmental impact are discussed.
Students go through the design process and the scientific method to test the effect of blade design on power output. There is an optional extension to use the data to create an optimal set of wind turbine blades.
This visualization is a utility-scale, land-based, 80-meter wind map. It states, utilities, and wind energy developers use to locate and quantify the wind resource, identifying potentially windy sites within a fairly large region and determining a potential site's economic and technical viability.
This is a series of 10 short videos, hosted by National Science Foundation, each featuring scientists, research, and green technologies. The overall goal of this series is to encourage people to ask questions and look beyond fossil fuels for innovative solutions to our ever-growing energy needs.
In this activity, students use Google Earth to investigate a variety of renewable energy sources and select sites within the United States that would be appropriate for projects based on those sources.