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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

Energy hacks

This resource forms part of the Clean Growth resources from the Grand Challenges resource collection.  The introductory video can be found here.

The Energy Hacks activity consists of five 1 hour lessons which are broken up into three practical activities and then use these findings to produce a social media campaign which highlights how we use and waste energy on a daily basis and what we can do to reduce this.

It is aimed more at 11-14 year olds but could be developed for 14-16 year olds too and builds on what was discussed in the Building Busters activity.  The three practical activities consist of:

  • How much energy is used by different components, in this case an LED, a motor and a buzzer
  • Burning a bunsen burner to see how much fuel can be used to generate heat.  Perhaps you could develop this by using different fuels to see which fuel is best
  • Looking at how heat is lost through convection, and why we use loft insulation for example in our houses. 

From the results a social media campaign is produced mirroring popular platforms where a video is produced, banners for advertising on websites, pictures to push the message and more.

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