Helping ourselves and helping others

📘 connect to physics
⚠️ known tripwires
💁🏽 teaching notes

Use the responses to the hinge question to guide children to one of three levels of discussion.

👣 How can we work together to not demand too much? 👣

🩺 Children may struggle to appreciate the power envelope available and to separate this from the total energy draw down over the day.

If I don't demand power, there is some left for everyone else.

My bills are lower if I use less.

We could just make more.

🔎 Start diagnostic and exploratory discussions using thoughts like these:

Power is for now only — you can't store it up for later.

Energy is what you pay for — it all adds up.

The energy has to come from somewhere & we can run out.

🩺 Children will begin to appreciate the power envelope available and to separate this from the total energy draw down over the day. They might struggle to use this difference to decide how these goods might be distributed.

There is only so much power to share out.

I could spread my costs over different times.

Whenever you make a demands, you pay. So why delay what you want to do?

🔎 Start diagnostic and exploratory discussions using thoughts like these::

How can we share the power out fairly?

How would spreading out demand help everybody?

What can we do to reduce demand?

🩺 Children will appreciate the power envelope available and separate this from the total energy draw down over the day, and discussions will show how this might be distributed.

I could choose to demand power at a different time from my friends — that's good sharing.

The power that's available can only be shared so many ways: if I demand lots now someone else misses out.

We could just build more power stations.

🔎 Start diagnostic and exploratory discussions using thoughts like these::

Sharing power out by demanding power at different times would mean we need fewer power stations.

Over a whole day my use might be the same, but I could help everybody out by thinking about when.

Energy is what you pay for, power is what you deny from moment to moment.