Energy Intelligence Agency
The Energy Intelligence Agency is the focus of this activity.
In an active way, students discover a few critical facts about how we use energy and how much energy we use. Each student has a "clue," some of which are pertinent energy facts and others are silly statements that are clearly unrelated to the topic. Students mingle and ask each other for clues until they have collected all the facts they need. This provides a more interactive way to communicate energy statistics, compared to a lecture and introduction with board work. The goal is to introduce students to some key terms and issues associated with energy as a necessary prerequisite for the remainder of the unit.
Engineers have a critical role to play in harnessing energy resources for use by society. They are among the professionals who have enabled our world-wide mobility, communication, safe food storage etc. These technological advances have benefitted society, but also consume a lot of energy. Developed countries, such as the US, have benefitted from engineered technologies, but now function at unsustainable energy consumption amounts. Engineers must now also contribute to a solution by making tools and devices more energy efficient and developing ways to harness renewable energy resources.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Provide a definition of our "energy crisis" that includes aspects of dwindling supply, over consumption and health impacts from pollution.
- Construct an argument for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.