Part I: What is Energy?

Part II: Everything Runs on Energy

Part III: The Source of Energy

View the presentation here:


https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwyldGpt2s6HZjM4ZmVkYzYtYTk5Mi00ZjgwLThmYWQtNzcwOThlOThkZjBl/edit?authkey=CO7DsfkB

Teaching Notes:
1. "Energy" is an important, expensive, and limited resource. [By "energy" we really mean fuel]
2. The world economy rises and falls on it supply.
3. People like Ghaddafi can become rich and powerful for many decades with access to it.
4. It takes a huge amount of energy to get into space (off the ground).
5. Energy is very special.
6. I love the subject of energy; it's what I do --- measure thermal energy, save energy, makes things work, makes life better, makes life possible.
7. Better thermal insulation systems means saving money and making possible new kinds of buildings and transportation vehicles. It means advances in foods, medicines, and refrigeration and air conditioning for human comforts.

Demonstration Notes:
1. Fill dog dish with "liquid air" (LN2).
2. Blow up balloon with air: condense that air to make liquid air.
3. Natural state of things: took a lot of heat energy to make a little liquid (it doesn't like the relatively hot world around it).
4. Pop the film cap: see! energy!
5. Now, air went into the room air, the atmosphere: When will it become liquid again just on its own? Never! Won't happen!
6. Energy is conserved but entropy (disorder) is always increasing: cars and people break down; not the other way around.
7. Every living thing is a complex energy-intensive machine to keep maintained and running. The living thing doesn't have perpetual motion and much less accidental, step-wise creation of itself over vast periods of time. The laws of nature to do not work in this direction; they always, in the net aggregate summation, work in the opposite direction which is increasing disorder.
8. Fill a jar with wrist-watch parts: shake jar until it assembles itself and builds a factory for making more watches and sets up a Facebook page to do marketing.