A Day Without Electricity

When Ms. Drea rings the bell, third graders pour into the barely lit hallway. As they do, they suddenly experience what it’s like to be deprived of a commodity that many of us take for granted – electricity.

“Whoa!” one student exclaims upon entering our dark classroom and reading the morning message, illuminated by the two dozen LED candles scattered around the room, “Today, we will spend a day without electricity,” I say.

It’s the first day of our new project-based learning unit, and as the students settle in at their seats, excitement about spending a day without electricity is high. During our first period, reading, students eagerly take an LED candle and get comfortable with a book.

“This is so cozy!” One student remarks, “I feel like I’m in some kind of cabin in the woods.”

The novelty of this experience begins to wear off as soon as students are faced with inconvenient realities of using no electricity. In math, after finishing their assigned class work, several students approach me, Chromebooks in hand, and ask,

“Can we do IXL practice?” expecting the answer to be yes, as it would be on any other day.

“Sorry, Friends, no Chromebooks today. We have no electricity,” remind them. Even in our dimly lit classroom, disappointment is visible on everyone’s face, and an audible moan spreads across the room. Their disappointment grows when they realize that we also cannot continue our analysis of the Cinderella movie that we have been watching as part of our Writer’s Workshop unit on fairy tale adaptations.

The goal of spending a day without electricity was to spark new appreciation for the way we live our everyday lives, and students did enjoy the experience – at least for a while. At the end of the day, I asked students to reflect on our day without electricity. Several students agreed it was fun at first. Another student lamented that they would never be able to play games online with their friends or watch their favorite TV show. I also asked them to think about life without a refrigerator, washing machine, or hot water. And when I asked if anyone would continue the day without electricity at home, the answer was a resounding, “No!”

Electricity and the U.N. Goals for Sustainable Development

When the kids returned to school after a day without electricity, with the general consensus that electricity is something that’s necessary and good, students engaged in research on how electricity in the US is produced and the effects energy production has on the environment. Through their research, students also related their discoveries to the U.N. Goals for Sustainable Development (UNGSD) our current PBL unit focuses on: Affordable and Clean Energy (Goal 7) and Climate Action (Goal 13). Students found out that in 2021, the United States’s electric power sector was responsible for around 30 percent of the U.S.’s carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas that when emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere contributes to retaining heat. Responsible for the CO2 emission is the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. “Most of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, only very little comes from green sources,” a group of students discovered in their research. The more CO2 is present in the atmosphere, the more light from the sun gets trapped, similar to how the inside of a car heats up

Student

Determine the necessary electricity production to successfully power all model electronic devices home.

when left standing in the sun. The real-world consequences that the UNSDGs are trying to mitigate include the melting of ice caps, rising sea levels, more extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts, as well as the impacts on plants, animals and humans. In order to limit the amount of CO2 we emit into the atmosphere and mitigate the effects of climate change, students came to realize that action is necessary. However, while reducing energy consumption is certainly part of a solution, modern life without electricity is neither desirable, as 3rd graders experienced, nor sustainable.

Exploring Electricity

Before we could delve any further into studying renewable energy, the class needed a firm understanding of electricity and how to build electrical circuits.

Student Performance Task

Research electricity consumption of household electronic devices and evaluate a realistic representation in a model home.

Using a technique designed by the engineering professor, Dr. AnnMarie Thomas PhD, of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, the class learned how to build different electric circuits using conductive and insulating play dough. Students first learned about the different kinds of circuits, short circuits, parallel circuits, serial circuits, and insulators and then practiced drawing circuit diagrams. They also studied the different components required to make an electric circuit, and could soon use battery packs, wires, copper tape, and LED lights to make functioning electric circuits from their planned diagrams. The safe nature of these materials enabled students to explore freely and engage in productive failure, a term coined by the Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in her work on growth mindset - a concept that Third graders learned about in their last PBL unit on the brain. Through persistent experimentation, such as testing different wire connections and changing the polarization of the LED lights, students became skillful electrical engineers who could not only build working electric circuits, but could also experiment with and learn the pros and cons of different types of circuits.

“Look! We got 5 LEDs to light up in my circuit!” one student proudly shared with the class who marveled at their colorful display of play dough and LED lights.

“Use a parallel circuit! I think it can power more lights,” another student suggested.

It’s in these kinds of spontaneous discussions that true learning is happening, and this particular realization about the nature of parallel circuits would prove important in the later stages of our project.

Studying Renewable Energy

After exploring the physics of electricity and electric circuits, Third graders now had the foundation to analyze the benefits and challenges of the renewable energy sources we had discussed earlier. By replacing battery packs with miniature solar panels on their own electric circuits, the students demonstrated that solar power is a promising source of renewable energy.

“It’s just very easy to use, you just put it on your roof or a lot of other places,” one student

“But it needs to be sunny for solar power to work, so a place with a lot of sunshine would be best. Also, it doesn’t work at night, and we use a lot of electricity at night for all the lights, TVs, and so on” another student commented. This realization sparked a discussion about storing electricity.

Student Performance Task

Evaluate and integrate a diverse portfolio of renewable energy sources for the model home.

“In Portugal, they pump water into high up reservoirs, which they then use to run turbines at night to make electricity!” one student shared.

“Teslas have big batteries in them to store electricity for driving,” another student shared.

I then asked the students to further explore wind power, geothermal power (electricity generated by taking advantage of high temperatures deeper under the Earth’s surface or near places with volcanic activity) and hydropower. With the same analytical and critical lens and considering benefits and challenges, students concluded that many different types of renewable energy sources will need to be part of a portfolio for a more sustainable future.

Real-World Solutions Small and Large

A large-scale example of an institution that uses many sources of energy is the home of the Philadelphia Eagles, Lincoln Financial Field. We visited the Linc, our PBL unit’s field trip, in order to take a closer look at their green energy efforts. When we arrived, the students marveled at the immense number of solar panels in the parking lot and the stadium facade. On our tour, we learned that the stadium is equipped with more than 11,000 solar panels and 14 wind turbines, which tower high above the football field. Together, the Linc’s renewable energy system produces more than 4 Megawatts, four times what is used for a whole season of home games for the Eagles.

“On off days,” our tour guide Dan explained, “some of the generated electricity even goes back into the power grid as 100% green energy.” Dan also explained some of the challenges with using renewable energy. “Unfortunately, our wind turbines are in need of repair. The company that constructed them went out of business and it’s very expensive to repair them.”

Back at school, I asked students what they had learned about renewable energy from this memorable trip. Students agreed that large institutions, like Lincoln Financial Field, can contribute greatly to reducing our carbon footprint and be leaders in the effort to create a more sustainable future with clean energy. They also lamented that windmills have big moving parts that break easily and are expensive to maintain.

After witnessing what large organizations are capable of doing, I invited a renewable energy expert, Julian Burnett, to visit our class. Julian works closely with the Philadelphia Energy Authority, a task force created by the Philadelphia City Council and the Mayor, with a mission to promote renewable energy projects in Philadelphia. In an interactive and engaging presentation, Julian deepened the students’ understanding of how the different kinds of renewable energy sources work. He also demonstrated how Frankford Friends could offset the vast majority of its electricity consumption with about 130 solar panels installed on the roofs of buildings throughout our campus. Producing clean energy, however, is only part of the whole picture, Julian explained. “We also need to think about energy efficiency and reducing consumption.”

From Problem to Solution

Using their experiences from our day without electricity, as well as our experiments with electricity and our study of renewable energy, I asked the students to imagine what it would take to build a house powered by renewable energy. The class determined that solar power would need to be a part of their project.

“The sun shines everywhere, so we definitely need to put solar panels on each roof,” one student commented.

“We also need batteries to store the electricity that we make,” another explained.

Using their knowledge of limitations of solar power, the class agreed it would be beneficial to integrate wind, geothermal and hydro-electric power, in order to take advantage of different local conditions. “I might live in a really windy town,” one student commented, “while someone could live near a volcano.”

After this pre-planning, I informed the class that for the final phase of our PBL unit, we would be building our own sustainable energy houses. The class made cardboard templates of their houses and then traced them onto particle board. After a grown-up cut out the particle board, students used wood glue and hot glue to put their house together, and then painted their homes. “They look like doll houses!” students commented as they marveled at their work.

Goal 7 is about ensuring access to clean and affordable energy, which is key to the development of agriculture, business, communications, education, healthcare and transportation. The lack of access to energy hinders economic and human development.

Latest data suggest that the world continues to advance towards sustainable energy targets. Nevertheless, the current pace of progress is insufficient to achieve Goal 7 by 2030. Huge disparities in access to modern sustainable energy persist.

A home would not be a home without furniture and appliances and other things we care about. So the students planned what items they would like to add to their homes, keeping in mind that all electronics need to be wired and powered. Third graders thought carefully about the items they needed, such as a fridge and a stove, and items they wanted, such as televisions and game consoles. In addition, students researched the electricity consumption of each electronic item. In order to accurately simulate the power consumption in our model homes, we decided to use LED lights to represent the use of electricity of each device. Low-powered (less than 200 kWh) items, such as modern light bulbs and flatscreen TVs use one LED light. Items that use between 200 and 1,000 kWh need two LEDs, and power-hungry devices that use more than 1,000 kWh, such as electric stoves or air conditioners, need three LEDs. Digging back in their memory from earlier weeks, one student commented, “Let’s make sure we use parallel circuits when we’re connecting our things to the solar panels. We can use multiple lights on the same circuit then” student added.

Over the course of a few weeks, third graders collaboratively tinkered, glued, and measured, and made use of all the rich resources the IDEA lab has to offer. Students crafted tiny TVs, fridges and other electronics as well as furniture in order to make their homes look as realistic as possible. They cut and stripped wires, drilled holes in their model home walls for the wires needed to connect each item to a power source. After a lot of planning and work, fun and frustration, and the occasional splinter from the woodwork, third graders proudly presented their fully functional, green energy homes.

Conclusion

The knowledge and skills that students have gained through their project show that making a positive impact on our planet is possible. By embracing renewable energy, these students have taken a step towards a cleaner, greener future while also being aware of the challenges that each form of renewable energy entails. We can all learn from their work and make a commitment to reducing our carbon footprint, whether it’s through reducing our consumption in our daily routines or taking on larger projects by incorporating more renewable energy sources in homes and businesses - even stadiums. We all each have the power to make a difference for a greener, more sustainable future.

Electronic components and technology used by the third grade were donated to the IDEA Lab by an anonymous donor, a Quaker engineer who supports creativity, problem finding and problem solving.