A History of Power Sources

Learning objectives

After finishing this lesson, students will understand how fire, wind, biological sources, water, coal, gas, oil, nuclear, and solar have all been used as power/energy for human machinery, etc.

Introduction

(5 minutes)

·         Have your students separate into small group and discuss: What is the definition of power? What are the different sources of power that humans have used?

·         Have students write down all the things they have done in the last twenty-four hours that required some sort of power.

Explicit instruction/Teacher modeling

(20 minutes)

·         With slides, including pictures, go through the sections listed below to teach your students about:

• • Fire: a chemical reaction that turns flammable materials into heat energy used for cooking and making tools. Man began using fire power more than 200,000 years ago.

Include pictures of primitive cooking and primitive tools

Define: nomads, hunter-gatherer communities

• • Biological power: humans have domesticated larger quadrupeds (horses, cows, etc.) and used them to transport goods and people in greater quantities and at greater overall speeds. Began roughly 10,000 years ago.

Question: How would the invention of the wheel affect humans’ desire to domesticate load-bearing animals?

• • Wind power: humans learned how to use the wind’s power to turn simple machinery (grain mills) and propel seacraft (sails). Sailboats have been around since about 5,000 BC and the first grain mills appeared in Persia about 500 AD. Later in the 1880s, wind would start to be used to generate electricity.

Include pictures of sailboats, grain mills, and a wind farm.

Define: kinetic energy

Question: How do you think that sailing affected human life?

• • Water: the Greeks figured out that they could use water to turn wheels just as some had used wind. Early civilizations also found that they could dig irrigation ditches so they wouldn’t have to carry water to their crops. Water power was eventually used for textile mills, sawmills, and other machinery. In the late 1800s waterfalls began to be used for electricity and hydroelectric plants now produce a significant percentage of electricity in the US. The water has to be either running (river) or falling (waterfall) for it to produce energy, this is why the mills had to be built close to a river or waterfall.

Include pictures of water mills, textile mills, and a hydroelectric plant

Define: hydroelectric, mill

• • Coal: At first coal was just used to create heat for blacksmithing and warming homes. The first coal-powered steam engine was made in the mid-1700s, soon there were steam ships. In the 1800s it was used for gas lighting and was eventually used to generate electricity as well. Coal has to be mined out the ground.

Define: The Industrial Revolution, steam engine

Include pictures of steam locomotives

• • Oil: Petroleum and other oils were found to be more effective and less expensive than coal or whale oil. However, oil only really took off in the early 1900s when it could be used for automobiles, planes, etc. As these oils were burned, inventors realized the gas could be used too.

  • Nuclear: after WWII, it was found the nuclear fission could generate a lot of electricity. Nuclear power hasn’t grown that much because the radioactive leftovers are hard to deal with.

Define: nuclear fission, radioactive

• • Solar: the sun has always allowed plants to grow, and even made the wind blow, supporting life on earth. The first attempt to take the sun’s heat energy and turn it into electrical power was in the late 1800s. Today, energy companies use solar panels to pick up and transfer heat energy from the sun into electricity.

Define: solar panels, renewable energy source

Guided practice/Interactive modeling

(5 minutes)

·         If possible, provide cards with different technologies on them. Have the students separate into groups and try to determine which power sources have been/could be used to power each technology. If no cards are available, do this activity as a class.

·         Have your students make individual lists of times they, to their knowledge, have used any of the power sources listed above.

Assessment

(5 minutes)

·         Students can be assessed based on their participation and ability to match the correct technologies to the right power source or historical era.

Review and closing

(5 minutes)

·         Call students together.

·         Go over the answers to card matching exercise.

·         Ask students to share how they can save energy in their daily habits.