Clean Energy Topic: Circuitry
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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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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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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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How Do Solar Panels Work?
Students will learn the basics of how a solar cell generates electricity and observe the effects on a small electrical load attached to a solar module under a variety of conditions. They will build upon knowledge gained in previous lessons dealing with energy transformations in order to build an understanding of how the sun’s energy…
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Adrift in a Sea of Plastic
Students will explore the phenomenon of plastic garbage islands and develop engineering solutions to address the problem. Students will use 3-D modeling and 3-d pens and printers to create their model solutions, and conduct research on the problem and present on the problem and their solution (4 lessons).
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Design and Engineer Solutions
This lesson is designed to span 9 days with 50-minute sessions. The students will use a Design and Engineering Journal to guide them in the design and engineering process. In small groups they will use the research from lesson 2 to formulate solutions to the problem of plastic trash islands. The students will build models…
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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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Solar Boat Science Investigation & Building Solar Boats
Design a science investigation to test a solar speedboat, airboat, and surface submarine. Students will use the “Planning an Investigation Template” in order to determine their motivations for designing a solar boat, make predictions about the outcomes with this design, plan the construction by determining materials to be used in the design, diagram their plans,…
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How to Measure Output of Solar Modules?
Students will measure output from a solar module before a load is attached and relate it to real world output. They will make these measurements using a multimeter and be able to determine the optimal angle at which their module generates a current flow. This process is meant to reveal to students some of the…
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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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Solar Mobile Design Challenge
This unit involves students learning about transferring solar energy to small motors, exploring the center of gravity and testing light sources (including the sun). The culminating engineering design project gives students the chance to pull together their new learning in order to design a tabletop solar powered mobile (5 lessons).
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Solar Mobile Design Challenge – Construction
This is the culminating hands-on project for the Solar Mobile Design Challenge Lessons, with construction aligned to an engineering design process. Students start by Restating the Design Problem that was introduced to them in the beginning of the Unit. Next, they Brainstorm ideas and Plan out the construction of the mobile. Students research an aircraft…
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Exploring Circuits and Optimum Power
This lesson is an exploratory learning cycle that will give the instructor input as to where students are in their understanding of circuits and also scaffolds student learning. This lesson starts by engaging students by using an Energy Stick. Then, students start by working with small lamps and LEDs to build simple series and parallel…
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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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Solar Sphero SPRK+
This unit incorporates basic programming knowledge and solar energy into an engineering design challenge using Sphero SPRK+ robots. The theme for this challenge centers on the idea of Mars rovers, and the challenges faced in space exploration, specifically remote control of exploration tools and the energy generation needed to power these devices (6 lessons).
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Final Challenge and Presentation
In this lesson, students will navigate through a maze using their SPRK+ in order to reach the solar charging station. Students will redesign their chariot in order to meet the needs of this new maze in order to carry their solar panels to the charging station, providing energy for their rover to continue working. Following…
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Chariot Engineering Design
Students will work through the engineering design process to build a chariot for their SPRK+ that will carry their solar panels through a maze to a charging station. Students will draft prototypes, test their designs, and make changes to their design based on the initial success of the chariot.
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Electricity Fundamentals and Photovoltaics
Students work through a number of solar circuit explorations that culminate in a challenge to charge the Sphero SPRK+ devices with solar panels. In this exploration, students will investigate the requirements of various loads, working toward the voltage and amperage requirements presented specifically by the SPRK+ charging station.
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Mars Exploration Debate
Students will research and then debate about the value of Mars exploration through robotic and/or human missions using a debate structure.
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Sphero Edu Coding
After working on a few Scratch drag and drop programs, participants will transition to Sphero Edu, a comparable drag and drop program for Lesson 2 to prepare to program a Sphero SPRK+ ball to navigate through a maze.
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Introduction to Drag and Drop Coding Using Scratch
Students go through a series of exercises and projects/challenges to gain familiarity with coding, specifically with drag-and-drop coding. Students will look at Scratch, a free introductory computer programming language, which focuses on creative computing. After working on a few Scratch drag and drop programs, participants will transition to Sphero Edu (formerly Lightning Lab), a comparable…
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Chemical Differences in Emergency Energy Sources
In the context of preparing a disaster supply kit, students develop atomic and molecular models of energy resources, analyze combustion of various fuels and build circuits. They then research and evaluate the impacts of converting natural resources into PV cells. Finally, students engineer a hand warmer that uses an exothermic chemical reaction (5 lessons).
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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 structure of the resource differs and leads to different optimal applications of the resource in an emergency…
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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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Engineering with Renewable Energy: Solar Water Pumping Activity
Students will learn that energy from the sun can be converted to electrical energy to do work by engineering a solar water pump system and collect and graph data in their investigations.
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Understanding E-Waste Through Battery Design
In this unit of multi-day lessons, students will further their understanding of energy, electricity, and basic circuits by focusing on batteries and e-waste. Students will build on their existing knowledge of energy, exploring how it is stored and used in everyday life, as well as the role of batteries in energy systems. Hands-on experiments with…
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Exploring Eco-Friendly Battery Design
Students will design multiple batteries using potatoes, lemons, pennies, and cola. They will use qualitative analysis to understand the voltage of each battery type. Based on their hands on experience students will understand methods to increase voltage and what makes a good battery design.
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Engineering Clean Energy For Our Community
Students will explore how different clean energy methods can power a motor. Using the engineering design process students will evaluate each energy source and relate it to e-waste concepts from previous lessons. They will learn about wind turbines and design a wind turbine. They will learn about solar power and design a solar boat. They…
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How Might We Design A Battery That Reduces E-Waste
Students explore the guiding phenomenon to understand e-waste and connect it to battery design. Students will research to ask questions, define problems and communicate information about e-waste to prepare for further exploration into electronics and battery design for the next lesson portion.
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Solar vs Wind Energy Unit
Students learn the fundamentals of energy transformation and vocabulary, electrical circuits, explore energy usage in their homes. Students then explore energy generation, including the use of magnetism and renewable energy sources.
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Variables Affecting Solar Power
Students will be learn to identify and explain at least three variables that effect the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and students will conduct a scientific investigation to determine which photovoltaic cell configuration will generate the most power.
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Introduction to Energy
Students will be able to name and describe at least 5 kinds of energy, and students will be able to identify and explain simple energy transformations