Electrical Energy Examples for Your Middle School Classroom

May 21, 2021

2 min read

We use electrical energy to light our homes, cook our food, and power our electronic devices. Electrical energy is vitally important to humans, but where does it come from? Students need to apply what they have learned about the forms of energy to investigate the different electrical energy sources. These different types of energy can be transformed into electrical energy. This blog post is all about electrical energy examples to help your students understand the way energy can transform and the conservation of energy.

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How to Generate Electrical Energy

There are many different ways to generate electrical energy. For example, the most common way is to burn fossil fuels to boil water. Steam from the water turns a turbine that using electromagnetic induction to generate an electrical current. However, other types of energy can also be converted into electrical energy.

Renewable and Nonrenewable Electrical Energy Examples

Most science textbooks organize electrical energy examples into renewable and nonrenewable energy sources. We can replace renewable energy sources in less than a human lifetime. Nonrenewable energy sources take longer to replace. The fossil fuels we use today were mostly algae, bacteria, and plants that lived over 300 million years ago, so they are definitely nonrenewable. While they are nonrenewable, they are popular because they are relatively cheap and consistent. On the other hand, they are limited and are damaging the environment.

Renewable sources of electrical energy include solar energy, wind energy, and biomass energy. Each of these types of energy also has pros and cons. For example, solar energy is clean, but only available during the day.

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My favorite way to organize a unit of electrical energy examples is to have students identify the pros and cons of each. Then, I would assign each student a state or country and have them design a power system using some of the electrical energy sources. For example, California would be a great place for geothermal and tidal power. If you wanted to get even more complicated, you could calculate the state or country’s energy needs and make sure that students’ power sources will provide sufficient energy.

A FREE Digital Science Unit

If you need content to teach your students about electrical energy examples, you can check out my latest digital science unit! It teaches about various electrical energy examples. The best part? It is free! It is also a good example of my digital science units. You can get them on a variety of topics, and they make differentiation in your classroom much easier. Click the picture to check out my Sources of Electrical Energy Digital Science Unit.