Creator: Ashley Ashbeck
C&I 371, Spring 2009
Lesson 3: From Coal to Outlet: How Does a Piece of Coal Become Electricity?
Grade Level: 1st Grade
Unit Topic: Energy Conservation
Time Needed: Day 1- 30 minutes; Day 2- 40 minutes; Day 3- 60 minutes
Lesson Context: This three-day lesson is following a lesson where the students learned how coal is formed, why it’s an important non-renewable energy source, and the issues that arise from how it’s mined from the land and how easy it is to restore the land. During this lesson, the students will learn about the services provided by their local utility company, Madison Gas & Electric, what a utility company does for its customers, how electricity is produced from coal, and how that electricity gets from the power plants to their homes or school. This lesson will then lead into the next, which will teach the students how to fill out an energy survey. These energy surveys will guide the students in analyzing how much electricity they use.
Madison Metropolitan School District Standards:
· Describe the difference between goods and services and identify the people who provide them.
UW-Madison Teacher Standards:
· STANDARD 7: UNDERSTANDS AND ADAPTS TO MULTIPLE FORMS OF COMMUNICATIONTeachers understand and adapt to students’ multiple forms of expressing and receiving experiences, ideas and feelings.
Wisconsin DPI Social Studies Standards:
· D.4.3 Identify local goods and services that are part of the global economy and explain their use in Wisconsin
Content Objectives:
Students will learn that…
· Power plants are what we call buildings that generate electricity.
· A utility company is a company that generates and distributes electricity and natural gas to customers in their area.
· Wisconsin is divided into many service territories, and the utility company that serves the area that you live in is the company that will provide electricity to your home or school.
· The process of electricity generation involves the following steps: chunks of coal come off the train, up a conveyor belt into the plant, through the crusher where it is crushed into pebble-sized pieces, through the pulverizer which crushes the coal into a fine powder; the powder is combined with air and blown into the boiler where it acts as fuel for the fire, which heats the water in the boiler producing steam; the steam is pumped through pipes and past the turbine, which turns, and in following turns the generator which produces electricity [the science of this will be passed over].
· Electricity flows through wires called power lines.
· It is dangerous to touch the power lines, whether it’s by touching the lines with a kite, stick, ladder, or with your hands if it’s a wire that’s fallen down from the poles.
· Usually located on the land right next to the power plant is a substation, which is a fenced off area with equipment that speeds up the flow of electricity through the power lines—the electricity has to flow faster so it can travel long distances along the power lines.
· The electricity that is traveling fast through the transmission lines needs to be slowed down in order to change its direction and carry it closer to homes, businesses and schools. The transmission lines carry the electricity down to a substation, where the equipment slows down the speed of the electricity.
· The electricity is then sent out on new power lines called distribution lines. Distribution lines are power lines that are smaller than transmission lines, are held in the air closer to the ground, and held up by wooden power poles.
Process Objectives:
Students will…
· Brainstorm and share what they think their local utility company, Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E), does in the community.
· Draw a picture describing what they think happens inside a power plant to turn chunks of coal into electricity.
· Act out the process that coal goes through to generate electricity inside a power plant.
· Revise their pictures to demonstrate their new understanding of how electricity is generated in a power plant.
· Participate in “Think, Pair, Share” about how they think electricity gets from the power plant to their home or school.
· Model the distribution path of electricity from the power plant to their homes and school.
· Take a field trip to see first-hand some of the aspects of electricity distribution.
· Generate a question to send to MG&E about electricity, how it’s produced, or how it is transported to our homes and school.
Materials:
· **Contact your local utility company and ask whether they have coal samples available for classroom use. Typically, there are samples of coal fresh off the train, after the coal has gone through the crusher (size of small pebbles), after the pulverizer (a fine powder), and then fly ash (the residue after going through the boiler).
· Power point
· Computer projector
· Laptop
· Blank white paper
· Leaf blower
· 4 long sticks
· Overhead projector, blank transparency, marker
· Signs that say Substation (2), Transmission Lines (3), Distribution Lines (3)
· Long rope, or multiple ropes tied together
· chairs
Procedure:
· Day 1: Gather all of the students either on the carpet or in their seats. Remind the students that at the end of the day yesterday, our journey as a piece of coal left off as the coal was loaded onto a train to be shipped away. Today, the journey will continue as the students travel through a power plant to learn how coal becomes electricity. Power plants are what we call buildings that generate electricity. Show a picture of the Blount Generating Facility, located in downtown Madison and owned and operated by Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E). Then, show a picture of the West Campus Cogeneration Facility, located on the west side of the UW-Madison campus, and owned and operated by Madison Gas & Electric. Ask if any of the students have seen these buildings before. Then, ask what the students think goes on inside these buildings.
· Briefly introduce the Madison Gas & Electric Company and show their logo and a few pictures from their website that shows MG&E workers out in the community. Ask the students to share what they think MG&E and their workers do—these ideas could be written on the board. Tell the students that MG&E is called a utility company. A utility company is a company that generates and distributes electricity and natural gas to customers in their area. Show the following map of the electric utility service territories in Wisconsin (http://psc.wi.gov/utilityinfo/maps/documents/smallElectricMap.pdf) and show where MG&E’s territory is. Wisconsin is divided into many service territories, and the utility company that serves the area that you live is the company that will provide electricity to your home or school. Share a couple examples of different places in Wisconsin, and which utility company would provide electricity for that area.
· Focus the discussion back to Madison and MG&E. Tell the students that our utility company, MG&E, produces electricity from coal at many different power plants. Show the pictures of the Blount and West Campus Generation Facilities, and show pictures of the other generation facilities (power plants) that MG&E own and use to produce electricity. Use the following pages to gain facts, graphs, and photos for this part of the discussion: http://www.mge.com/about/powerplants.
· Have the students draw a picture and use writing to describe what they think goes on inside a power plant, and how chunks of coal going into the power plant can be turned into electricity coming out of the power plant.
· Day 2: **Prior to this part of the lesson, decide whether the school playground equipment will work suitably for the set-up described in Attachment A, otherwise set up the room in a manner similar.
o Coal unloaded off train and gathered in a pile outside. (Show the jar with chunks of coal.)
§ Have students gather in a group at the bottom of the slide.
o Coal is carried into the power plant on a conveyor belt.
§ Have the students climb up the slide with help from the teacher.
o The coal chunks are sent through the crusher, which crushes the chunks into pieces of coal the size of pebbles. Once the coal is crushed, it is stored in large silos that are as tall as three-story buildings. (Show the jar with the crushed coal.)
§ Have the students act out being crushed by the crushers at the top of the slide and have them come down to the ground.
o The crushed coal is then carried by conveyor belt to the pulverizer, which grinds the coal into a powder—to the consistency of powdered sugar. (Show the jar with the powderized coal.)
§ Have the students travel forward—if possible, to travel across a hanging bridge to another platform where they could act out being pulverized.
o The powderized coal is then blown into the boiler where it feeds the fire at the bottom of the boiler—the coal is burned, like wood is burned in a campfire.
§ Using a leaf blower, blow the air on the students and have them act like their being blown into the boiler.
o Inside the boiler, there are lots of pipes that are looped around and filled with water. As the water runs through the pipes from the bottom of the boiler to the top, the fire heats the water until it turns into steam.
§ Draw a curvy line on the blacktop with fire at the bottom—blow the students into the fire and have them run “up the boiler tubes” following the chalk line.
o The steam then travels through pipes and passes through the turbine, which is a wheel that turns like a propeller.
§ Place long sticks in a star pattern on top of the tire swing. Turn the tire swing so it looks like a propeller turning. Have the students walk-run toward the tire swing like they’re steam traveling through pipes, and then have each student pass by the “turbine” and spin it.
o The turbine then turns the generator, which is where the electricity is produced. Draw attention to the fact that people often say that electricity is generated and this is because it is produced in a generator.
§ Have the students pair up and grab both hands. Have both students twirl around, so that one student’s turning makes the other student turn.
· Show a diagram of the entire process that the students just acted out. Talk through it quickly, and draw parallels between the diagram and what the students did.
· Give the students their drawings from the previous day and have them revise their drawings, or make new ones, to show what they’ve learned about how electricity is generated.
· Day 3: Ask the students to think about how they think electricity gets from the power plant to their home or to the school. Give the students a minute or two to think, and then have them turn to a partner and share their ideas to each other. Open up the brainstorming to the entire class. Write down the students’ ideas on an overhead as they share.
· Tell the students that we are going to create a model to learn how electricity travels to our home and school. Tell the students that electricity flows through wires called power lines. The rope is going to represent the power lines, and we are going to make believe that there is electricity flowing through the rope. This is a great opportunity to stop and remind students that it is dangerous to touch the power lines, whether it’s by touching the lines with a kite, stick, ladder, or with your hands if it’s a wire that’s fallen down from the poles. Say but for the sake of this model we are going to hold the power line with our hands.
o Tie the rope to the door handle—this is going to be where the electricity flows out of the power plant from the generator.
o Have one student stand next to the door, holding the rope. They should be given the sign Substation to wear around their neck. Usually located on the land right next to the power plant is a substation, which is a fenced off area with equipment that speeds up the flow of electricity through the power lines—the electricity has to flow faster so it can travel long distances along the power lines. Show pictures of different substations. **This would be a great opportunity to bring in the local area, if there is a substation in the neighborhood.
o Line up three chairs in a row after the “substation.” Have three students stand up on the chairs holding the rope. Each of these three students should get a sign saying Transmission Lines. Transmission lines carry electricity long distances through power lines that are larger than the power lines at the power plant. The transmission lines are held high in the air by large, metal structures. Show pictures of transmission lines, and ask if students have seen these power lines along I90/I94 (red/white striped).
o Have one student stand next to the last Transmission Line student, and give them a Substation sign. The electricity that is traveling fast through the transmission lines needs to be slowed down in order to change its direction and carry it closer to homes, businesses and schools. The transmission lines carry the electricity down to a substation, where the equipment slows down the speed of the electricity.
o Line up three students on the ground in a line, holding the rope. They should be given signs that say Distribution Lines. The electricity is then sent out on new power lines called distribution lines. Distribution lines are power lines that are smaller than transmission lines, are held in the air closer to the ground, and held up by wooden power poles. Show pictures of distribution lines, and draw the students attention to the fact that these are the power lines that travel alongside the roads in our neighborhoods.
o Model the speed of the electricity flowing through the power lines by running/walking alongside the rope, modeling how the substations either increase or decrease the speed of the electricity.
· **This activity requires preparation on the teacher’s part—figuring out where to walk in order for students to see as many of these aspects as possible. Take the students on a walking field trip around the school and neighborhood. They should be able to see distribution lines, possibly a substation, and then it can hopefully be pointed out that from the distribution lines, the electricity gets to houses either by overhead lines or underground. Require that, on this field trip, the students should come up with one question each that they have about how electricity gets to their home or school.
· Have the students write a letter to Madison Gas & Electric (find the correct contact person, which would be the public affairs leader). The letters can be collected and sent in, or quite possibly calling the utility company could result in someone coming to the school to talk about generating electricity, and answering the students questions. **For older students (Grade 5 or older), power plant tours of Blount Generating Station are available and can be set up two weeks in advance.
Assessment:
Formal: The pictures drawn by the students at the end of Day 1 allows the students to hypothesize how they think electricity is produced from coal inside power plants. These pictures are then revised at the end of Day 2, and by comparing the two I will be able to see what the students learn about the electric generation process. Having the students generate a question, and write that question in a letter to MG&E, shows me whether or not the students were engaged in the modeling and field trip, and that they were thinking about and questioning the process.
Informal: A lot of the assessment for this lesson involves watching for and analyzing the level of participation of each student.
Resources:
“Blount Generating Station.” Retrieved on April 26, 2009, at http://www.mge.com/about/powerplants/blount/index.htm.
“MG&E Partnership with Schools.” Retrieved on April 26, 2009, at http://www.mge.com/about/community/schools/.
“MG&E Power Plants.” Retrieved on April 26, 2009, at http://www.mge.com/about/powerplants/.
“Wisconsin Electric Utility Service Territories.” Retrieved on April 26, 2009, at
http://psc.wi.gov/utilityinfo/maps/documents/smallElectricMap.pdf.
