From stick bombs and hot-running laptops: IPN's OER lessons introduce students to the conversion of energy
August 4th, 2022
The basic concept of energy plays a central role in physics lessons at schools. It also includes the conversion of forms of energy. Ten new teaching units have been developed at the IPN in cooperation with the Universities of Hannover and Duisburg Essen in the project "energie.Transfer". In 4-6 lessons, students are introduced to different forms of energy conversion by means of exciting guiding questions. The questions are relevant to everyday life and are based on known and unknown physical phenomena.
Why does a laptop get hot? Why does a stick bomb always reach the same altitude? Those are just two of the questions addressed, for example, in the conversion of electrical energy into thermal energy or of tension energy into kinetic and position energy. The lessons always include experiments in which the students themselves can participate.
All units are implemented as Moodle courses, which can be downloaded and integrated into the school's own Moodle if required. All necessary materials are available on the IPN's OER site fOERde.
The teaser videos, which give a brief insight into two of the units, show examples of possible lesson scenarios.
