ENERGY CUBES
Methods:
Students obtained data on human energy use from the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy (2023) and Vaclav Smil (2017) via Our World in Data. We selected three years to show the changing energy mix: 1820, 1920, and 2021.
For each year, students represented humanity's energy use with colored beads. The color of the bead represented the type of energy: brown for wood, gray for coal, black for oil, teal for natural gas, orange for nuclear, dark blue for hydroelectric, white for wind, yellow for solar. The number of each color represented how much of that energy type humanity used that year
We assigned each bead an amount of energy: 153 TWh. (We chose this number so there were no half-beads at the lower energy-expenditures!). This number is about how much energy would be released if you detonated 6,000 Hiroshima bombs simultaneously. Or, you could think of it as enough energy to power New York City for 3 years. Each cube represented an incredible amount of energy.
Students then assembled the beads for 1820, 1920, and 2021.
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