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HomeCentre for Industry Education CollaborationSchool resourcesPrimary resourcesSustainable stories and solutions for our planet: Sustainable Fuels

Sustainable stories and solutions for our planet: Sustainable Fuels

Age range
9-11 years

The development of more sustainable fuel is used as a context to explore the varied roles of scientists and engineers in promoting sustainability. It gives children the opportunity to develop key working scientifically skills including discussion, problem solving, and asking questions. Children are encouraged to develop their own ideas and questions, methods of recording, conclusions and recommendations throughout the activities. The activities also make strong links with the topic of materials and their properties.

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Introduction

  • Keywords: sustainability, sustainable, working scientifically, materials, properties

Children carry out a survey to ascertain their thoughts about sustainability as well as their understanding of the impact of their own behaviour in actively bringing about change. They are encouraged to involve their families in the survey.

As a class, they create a "big-book" style environmental dictionary which will help others in their school to learn about important environmental issues.

Sustainable Fuel: Electricity to Gas

  • Keywords: sustainability, sustainable, working scientifically, materials, properties

Children observe what happens when an electric current is passed through water, seeing how the combined hydrogen and oxygen in liquid water are released as gases. Developing an understanding that this process is reversible.

Sustainable Fuel: Main Beam

  • Keywords: sustainability, sustainable, working scientifically, materials, properties

An opportunity to investigate the relationship between the brightness of a bulb and the number of cells in an electric circuit.

Sustainable Fuel: Lumpy Challenge

Exploration of two types of sugar dissolving in water, to consider whether there is a relationship between surface area of sugar and rate of dissolving.

Sustainable Fuel: Increasing Surface Area

Children investigate the properties of different grinding materials to find out which are better at grinding sugar cubes into more finely milled granules or powder.

Sustainable Fuel: Teams of STEM professionals

To enhance children’s understanding of STEM careers, information about a team three scientists working on fuel cells is presented in a variety of formats, including game cards, written information, and a map to locate each scientist in the team.