Energy Now

This multimedia package was developed by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme to provide teachers with clear and consistent ways of talking about energy. Energy is a particularly difficult concept to explain. These resources aim to cut through the confusion that often surrounds the energy concept, and examines some of the key teaching and learning issues. Energy Now includes ideas and background information, suggested practical work, and animations that can be used directly by students in the classroom. Key ideas include how energy is stored, how energy is transferred, conservation of energy and dissipation of energy.

The materials include 12 online ‘booklets’ of interactive resources:
• Mixing
• Difference and flow
• Spreading out
• Heating and cooling
• Insulation
• Hot stores of energy
• Moving stores of energy
• Doing work to store energy
• Chemical stores of energy
• Storing and transferring
• Some transfer devices
• Dissipation and efficiency

Each booklet has the following sections:
• Introduction: a summary of the key ideas
• Practical activity: supporting the development of concepts that are central to the understanding of the theme
• Visualising the ideas: animations that make the link from the ‘real world’ of the practical activity to the 'imagined world’ of scientific ideas
• In the classroom: how the practical activities and animations can be used in teaching, and questions that support learning
• Students’ ideas: a summary of the key learning difficulties that students have
• More information: further references and reading

The animations can be viewed directly from the ‘online’ booklet and the complete collection of them can be downloaded in a zip file.

The CD-ROM version of these resources can be purchased from Mindsets.

• URL: http://stem.org.uk/rx68c