A large and growing proportion of our electricity in the UK comes from renewables, and the amount of electricity generated varies depending on the weather. In this activity pupils watch a film in which Jade Kimpton from the National Grid shows how the flow of electricity in the National Grid is getting more complex...

This activity, from the Centre for Science Education and the Comino Foundation, is set in the context of choosing a birthday gift. It encourages students to think about carbon footprints. Which goods and services cause the biggest carbon dioxide emissions? What choices can we make to minimise emissions? 



The report from the Children’s Learning in Science Project (CLIS) gives an account of a number of aspects of students’ ideas about energy including:

*Do students use ideas about energy spontaneously to help them interpret phenomena?

*When students are ‘cued’ that energy is involved in a situation,...

These physics resources for students in Years 7-9 are part of the BRaSS initiative and should be used in conjunction with the Teachers' Pack.

In this lesson students investigate different fuels both practically and as a research project. This includes energy output, ease of combustion, the cost to environment in extraction, economic cost, ease of delivery and related factors.

Learning outcomes:

• Students could calculate the energy...

Produced by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, this booklet covers the age and energy output of the Sun. Included is an online video that discusses how the age of the Sun can be calculated. Questions and answers are included that test a student’s understanding of the physical and mathematical concepts.  It would be...

From the Institute of Physics, this resource provides extensive teacher guidance and suggested classroom activities to support the teaching of: 

• paying for getting things done
• shifting energy between stores
• energy resources and pathways
• calculating energy everywhere
• ...

A podcast from the Planet Earth Online collection and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Willow, palm, miscanthus and other energy crops are being touted as a possible solution to Britain's growing energy security problems. There are suggestions that they could help replace fossil fuels, plugging...

This Salters’ Chemistry Course unit from the University of York Science Education Group covered:
* Sources and uses of energy.
* Conservation of energy.
* Alternative and renewable energy sources.
* Solar energy as a fundamental source of biomass...

A Catalyst article devoted to food chains. This article looks at photosynthesis and the loss of energy from plants to animals throughout the food chain. How this limits the number of animals that can survive on the energy fixed by a patch of vegetation is explained. Foraging characteristics and how many animals can...

This is one of a series of focused units, from the Association for Science Education and the Design and Technology Association, to introduce students to important technologies and their applications. In their study of this unit students can improve their understanding of energy transfers and the efficiency of...

In Activities for the Classroom, the authors of the ‘Teaching about why things change’ project show how a new approach to the fundamental question 'why do things change?' can be adopted in teaching. They do this with a set of classroom activities which show how the...

In Background Stories for Teachers, the authors of the ‘Teaching about why things change’ project illustrate a new approach to the fundamental question 'why do things change?'. They do so with the help of stories about some scientific topics which show how the topics...