Background Information

If you didn’t read the quote by Richard Feynman in the Introduction, take a second to do that. Done? Now, breathe a sigh of relief. Even physicists of the Nobel laureate type don’t completely understand energy. That said, we encourage you and your students to dig into this topic with gusto. Here are a handful of informational resources that you and your students can consult to help underpin your exploration of energy transformations. Use them to supplement the materials you already have. For each resource, we’ve indicated if it is appropriate for student use, teacher use, or for use by both groups. You’ll find resources about potential and kinetic energy and other forms of energy, including one resource focused just on light.

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Introduction to energy http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/IntInfo/IntroI.pdf

Are you a little confused about types of energy and their transformations? Teachers and students can learn how different types of energy are categorized into potential and kinetic forms. Each brief paragraph explains how the form of energy is stored or released. Small icons are used to show how energy is transformed from one form to another. For example, readers can see that the chemical energy in gasoline is transformed into energy of motion in a car. At the bottom of the document you will find additional information about renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy. MSP full record

Types of energy http://www3.iptv.org/exploremore/energy/Energy_In_Depth/sections/types.cfm

Here’s a reading that can introduce students to a variety of energy forms and to some of the energy transformations that humans use to meet our energy needs. Paragraph-long overviews of each of nine different energy types are provided. Gravitational, mechanical, nuclear, and sound energy are among the featured types. These overviews touch on what the energy form is, where it can be found (for example, chemical energy in a match), and ways that humans can or might be able to convert the energy form into a more usable type. The reading is from a site about the future of energy. MSP full record

Photo courtesy of the Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the preparation of Teachers, copyright Arizona Board of Regents.

Light and optics http://acept.la.asu.edu/PiN/mod/light/pattLightOptics.html

It doesn’t take Superman’s special strength to take light and bend it, bounce it, or divide it. Teachers and students can read this series of brief articles to learn how the properties of light allow these optical wonders to happen in everyday life. You can navigate through the sections of the module by clicking on objective statements or connect to additional readings or activities through links at the bottom of the pages. Each article has photographs that represent the objective. For example, one photograph illustrating refraction shows a laser beam bending as it moves from air to water. MSP full record

Energy Tutorial http://www.nfcrc.uci.edu/EnergyTutorial/

Although most of this teacher-level tutorial is afield from our focus (but quite nice if you’re interested in energy use), two sections of it—Energy and Energy conversion—are worth dipping into for background information presented from a perspective other than that of your textbook. Since the tutorial is the handiwork of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, you can probably guess that it deals with energy issues like supply and efficiency from a practical viewpoint. No contrived real-world connections here! MSP full record

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Copyright March 2005 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.