Rivers of Life

Energy Odyssey Project Outline

Objective 1: Complete Preparation Activities.

Objective 2: Develop an Awareness of the Term Energy and its Sources.

Activity 1: What is Energy?

For younger students

For older students

Objective 3: Explore Energy Use Within your Watershed

Activity 2: Energy, Past and Present

Activity 3: Mining for Chocolate Chips

Activity 4: The Petroleum Puzzle

Objective 4: Explore Some Exciting New Renewable Energy Technologies.

Activity 5: Parabolic Solar Cooker

Activity 6: Tweety-bird Turbine

Activity 7: Energy for Life

Objective 5: Conduct an Energy Audit to See How You Use Energy.

Activity 8: Conduct an Energy Audit

Activity 9: A Contract to Save Energy

Activity 10: Energy Story

Objective 6: Map the Energy Resources in Your Watershed.

Activity 11: Map your Watershed’s Energy

Objective 7: Create an Energy Action Plan.

Activity 12: Energy Action Plan

Project Description

Energy Odyssey explores the many ways that energy flows through your watershed. Activities focus on learning about non-renewable and renewable sources of energy, and how energy is connected to the process of creating a sustainable society. Students identify the resources from which energy is generated in your watershed. Energy audits of your school and of student homes indicate how energy use impacts local environments. Students also investigate untapped sustainable energy resources that will teach them how to better care for our rivers and the lands that surround them.

OBJECTIVE 1: COMPLETE PREPARATION ACTIVITIES

Preparation Activities:

Getting Ready for Rivers of Life

The activities below are recommended to help your class prepare for their online river adventure. The first activity, Introducing You and Your Watershed, introduces your class at the start of the program. Next is an activity that introduces watershed mapping—an activity that is common to all projects.

Preparation Activity 1: Introducing You and Your Watershed

Introduce your class and community to your fellow Rivers of Life participants by submitting this information in the Introduction Discussion Item in the Conference Center at the start of the program. That way, we will know who is with us. Please include the following information:

•Identify your class, grade level, school, and community.

•Identify your latitude and longitude (you may want to post a world map with pins marking locations of other Rivers of Life schools).

•Identify your school’s watershed, the river that flows through it, and the ocean it eventually empties into (see following exercise if your students need help answering this question).

•Tell which of the four Rivers of Life projects you’ll be undertaking.

•Share any other brief comment or greeting (a couple of paragraphs at most, please), including any work or study your school has done regarding rivers.

•Send, via e-mail or US mail, a photo of your class or school for posting in the Rivers of Life Conference Center.

Preparation Activity 2: Mapping Your Watershed

All four projects involve mapping activities that have common elements as well as elements specific to each project. This introductory mapping activity introduces the concept of a watershed and basic features of a river system, including river source, tributaries, confluences, river mouth, and direction of flow.

For this activity, in addition to using a highway map and the topographic maps as described below, U.S. schools can also consult the watershed maps found at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Surf Your Watershed web site: These maps will help students recognize the borders of their watershed and its position in relationship to nearby towns. More detailed larger-format maps of each watershed can be requested from the EPA web site, though these maps may not be available for all watersheds. The larger-format EPA watershed maps can be received via the Internet or US mail.

Background

How do rivers change as they flow across the land? How do human activities affect the well-being of streams and rivers?

You don’t need gills and fins to appreciate how important rivers are for maintaining and enhancing life. We draw an estimated ninety percent of our drinking water from the world’s rivers—yet that only represents ten percent of the water they provide us. Irrigation uses 65 percent and industry another 25. The world’s rivers were original highways and are still important for commerce, transportation, and recreation. Their banks have become sites for some of our greatest cities. Since ancient times, rivers’ mysterious ways and ever-shifting personalities have inspired musicians, poets, artists, and writers.

Materials

  • highway map
  • USGS or other topographical maps and photocopies of those maps
  • colored pens
Procedure

Wherever you stand on planet Earth, you’re always within a watershed—an area of land that drains into a river or stream. Explore the concept of a watershed by studying the course followed by a nearby stream.

Step 1. Using a highway map, choose a small nearby stream to explore. Since a large stream may cover many of the topographic maps used in this activity, choose a stream less than about 16 km. (10 mi.) long.

Step 2. U.S. schools can order copies of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) topographic “topo” map (or maps) that show the length your stream. Schools in other countries can check with government offices to see if similar topographic maps are available. A state index of USGS topo maps and the maps themselves ($4 each) can be ordered by calling toll-free 1-800-USA-MAPS. Also, local outdoor stores may have topo maps of streams in your area.

(Note: To introduce the basic features of a watershed, this activity can be completed using any single topographical map [or contiguous series of maps] that has an entire watershed within its borders—it doesn’t have to be a map of a nearby stream. To save time finding and ordering local topo maps, you may find it easier to purchase from a local outdoor store topo maps of a regional or national wilderness area, which are more likely to be stocked than local maps of developed areas. )

Step 3. Photocopy the parts of the maps that show your stream and carefully tape the photocopies together to form one large map.

Step 4. Mark with colored markers the source and mouth of the stream, confluences (meeting points) with any tributaries, wetlands, connected ponds or lakes, and any dams or rapids.

Step 5. Figure out which way the stream is flowing on the map by studying the elevation numbers on those contour lines that cross the stream (descending elevation numbers indicates downstream flow). Draw directional arrows on the stream to show which way the water flows.

Step 6. Trace the watershed boundaries of a small creek that drains into your stream. Follow the creek to its source, then continue uphill until contour lines indicate the land begins sloping downward. This ridge is the “height of land” separating the creek’s watershed from neighboring ones. Trace this meandering ridge line in both directions until you’ve drawn the boundaries of the creek’s watershed.

Reflection Questions

  • How many other small watersheds can you find on your map?
  • What do colors and symbols on the topo maps suggest about how land is used in your stream's watershed?
  • Can you estimate the height of any dams by studying the map’s contour lines? Do symbols and colors suggest what any dams may be used for?
Project Introduction

Stand beside a river wave, and watch the river flowing through it. Unendingly, the water rushes by—and yet the wave remains.

Energy courses through our lives with equal mystery. It transforms itself to give us light, heat, sound, and power, while remaining a silent force largely unnoticed by us. Just as we need clean, safe water to drink for our very survival, we depend on energy in numerous ways throughout our lives. Indeed, flowing water and energy are so close in nature, they are sometimes one and the same thing. Historically, the wheels of industry throughout North America and elsewhere have been literally energized by the force of moving water. Hydropower is still a major source of electricity around the globe—in fact, the world’s greatest hydroelectric project is currently under construction on the Yangtse River in China.

The impacts of our energy use connect with water in yet another way. Airborne pollution from the burning of fossil fuels gets deposited in lakes and streams as acid rain. Heated water discharged from nuclear power plants can alter aquatic ecosystems. Hydroelectric dams can significantly change in many ways the structure of the rivers whose power they tap. Technologies that reduce these environmental impacts and promise renewable energy sources deserve our attention.

Energy Odyssey explores the many ways that energy flows through your watershed. By learning about our sources of energy, how we consume energy, and how these affect our watershed, we may discover more affordable, sustainable energy uses and resources that will help us take better care of our rivers and the lands that surround them.

OBJECTIVE 2: ENERGY AND ITS SOURCES

Activity 1: What is Energy?

Background

This activity will help students develop a conceptual definition of energy to use in this project. Their interest will guide their research into forms of energy that they can share with others in the classroom and on the ROL web site. Some background information may be helpful.

Matter is easy to describe. It’s “stuff” that comes in familiar forms: solid, liquid and gas. It has mass. It has weight. You can usually see and feel matter—it’s tangible. Energy is more “intangible,” yet it underlies our abilities to perceive everything: the light we see, the sounds we hear, and the heat we sense by touch are all forms of this intangible thing called “energy.”

Energy is difficult to define, but let’s start by saying: energy is any means by which matter can be changed.

Energy Introduction for Younger Students

Procedure

Step 1. Read the following story to your class and ask them to think about energy as you read.

What is energy? You lean out your window and feel a breeze on your face. You climb a hill to see (your city/town) spread out beneath you. Its moving points of light seem to throb with energy. The movement of cars, people on the sidewalks, the flowing of the river—all is a swirl of energy.

But the movement and lights of the city (town) are not the only forms of energy that surround you. You feel the energy of the wind on your face. As you walk down the street with earphones pouring great sound energy into your ears, you notice the sidewalk is cracked and slightly lopsided. Tree roots have grown under that sidewalk and the enormous energy of the tree’s growth has broken the concrete. A friend in Los Angeles, California, also has a cracked sidewalk, but there it was the relentless energy of movement of the ground itself that broke the concrete.

It’s getting dark and cool outside. When you arrive home, you feel the warmth inside your house. The lights are inviting. You feel the energy from dinner begin to surge through your veins. Energy moves through you and around you. But, what is energy?

Step 2. Allow students to brainstorm the question “What is energy?” by asking them to give examples of energy from the story. List responses on the chalkboard or poster paper. Ask students to think of examples of energy that weren’t mentioned in the story to extend the list. Save the list.

Reflection Questions:

  • What do you use energy for?
  • Draw a picture of an energy source.
  • Can you draw a picture of something at home that uses energy?
  • How is energy used at home/school/in town?
Energy Introduction for Older Students
Materials
  • 3 marbles of different sizes
  • bottom half of a milk carton
  • piece of corrugated cardboard about 8.5 X 11 inches
  • pile of books, 6 inches high
  • metric ruler
  • student journals
  • two plastic bottles
  • white and black paint
  • two small balloons
  • small appliances: radio, tape recorder, lamp, etc.
  • bright light
  • magnifying glass
  • things that make sounds: whistle, guitar, radio, etc.

Procedure

Step 1. Prepare the following small group activities in advance. Divide students into six groups. Tell them that they are going to “discover” forms or kinds of energy as they move from station to station. Have them write their observations in journals at each station. (Note: Do not label each station with the name for the energy form. Let students try to discover the energy form, even if they give it the “wrong” name. Also, you may want several parent volunteers to join you during the stations exploration.)

Station 1: Potential and kinetic energy: Set up an area with three marbles of different size, an inclined plane about one foot high at its tallest point (the piece of cardboard supported by the books), a metric ruler, and a milk carton. Place the lower section of a milk carton at the bottom of the inclined plane to catch the marbles as they are rolled down the plane and measure the distance they move the carton. (Note: You should set this up ahead and try it out to be sure the inclination of the plane is such that the milk carton moves when the marbles roll into it.) The parent/teacher at this station can begin by placing the three marbles on a flat plane at the top of the inclined plane and asking the group these questions:

  • What does it mean when your parents go to “work”?
  • What do you think is the meaning of work?
  • Which marble can work the hardest?
  • If you put the marbles at the top of the plane, would they have energy? Why?

Let the students experiment with rolling the marbles down the plane into the carton. They will observe that the milk carton moves a different distance for each marble. They can use their rulers to measure the distance the milk carton was moved.

  • Which marble had the most energy? Why?
  • How much more energy? How do you know?
  • Record observations in journals.

Station 2: Thermal energy—heat. Prepare in advance two plastic bottles, one painted white and one painted black. Place the open end of one small balloon over the mouth of the white bottle and do the same for the black bottle. Make sure the balloon forms an air-tight seal. Take students outside and place both bottles in bright sunlight or to an area in the classroom with a sunlamp. Students will observe that the balloon on the black bottle will start to expand. The balloon of the white bottle will remain limp. Students can touch both balloons to notice that the balloon on the white bottle will be warm while the balloon on the black bottle will be much cooler. The parent/teacher can ask the following questions:

  • What happened?
  • Why do you think the balloon on the black bottle expanded?
  • What does heat do to air?
  • Why does a dark object get warmer in the sun than a light object?
  • What would be a good color to paint your car if you wanted to stay cool in the summer?

Record observations in journals.

Station 3: Electrical energy. Explore the Franklin Institute’s web page on lightening: Then gather electrical appliances with power cords around the computer (for example, a radio, tape recorder, lamp, etc.) Students can examine the appliances after viewing the lightening simulation. Parent/teacher asks students the following questions?

  • What do all of these items have in common?
  • What kind of energy do these items represent?
  • What is the source of their energy? (Where does it come from?)
  • What happens when you walk across a carpet on a dry winter day and touch a metal appliance or pipe?
  • Why don’t battery-operated appliances need power cords?

Record observations in journals.

Station 4: Electrochemical energy (food). Have students check their heart rates while sitting quietly. Then have them run in place, do jumping jacks, run up a flight of stairs, etc. Have them check their heart rate again after engaging in physical activity. Discuss these questions.

  • Was there a difference in your heart rate before and after exercise?
  • What made your heart beat speed up?
  • Is your body warmer after working out?
  • What does energy have to do with these observations?

Lead students to the realization that the food they eat is turned into energy inside their bodies. Students may be interested in an integrated activity on the Explorer Home web site ( that introduces the concepts of the food chain and the storing of energy as it pertains to both humans and animals. Another one is