ENERGY USE begins by inviting students to take an inventory of the ways that they use electricity. By "following the wires" back to a power plant, and from there to a grid of all power plants in the country, your students will begin to grasp the vast infrarstructure that supports our way of life. Through laboratory experiments they will learn the basic principles on which electrical devices work; and through a brief history, they will learn how our national energy policy came to be. They will also learn about the huge amounts of Earth materials that are used for transportation, home heating, and industry on a daily basis, and the small fraction of that energy that is actually put to use. In the last portion of the unit your students will conduct simple experiments in which they discover that conservation will allow us to maintain our current levels of energy usage while saving billions of dollars and reducing our impact on the environment. They will also explore new technologies for satisfying the energy needs of a growing human population while keeping the impact of energy use to a minimum.

Energy Use is part of the GSS high school curriculum education theme Underlying Causes and Solutions