Outline

1 min         Introduction

• Who I am and why I’m here
• Some info about UBC Outreach

1. What is electricity used for?
2. Why is electricity important to you?
3. Where does electricity come from?
4. What are some different kinds of power plants?
5. Do any of these types of power plants have problems with pollution or resource depletion? Which ones and what are the problems?
6. Can you think of any ways of generating electricity that don’t cause as much pollution or that don’t use up resources? What are they?

• Solar panels require large amounts of area
• What solar cells are made of
• How solar energy is converted to electricity
• How solar cells are connected together into solar arrays

• Demo shows how a battery storage unit (capacitor) is charged during the daytime (lightbulb) and discharges at nighttime (green LEDs)

• Parts of a wind turbine
• Description of how wind energy is converted to mechanical energy by blades of wind turbine

• Students will make paper pinwheels to experiment with how wind speed and wind direction affect the rotational speed of the pinwheel

• Demo shows how wind speed and wind direction affect the amount of electricity generated by the wind turbine

• Pros and cons of solar and wind power