Energy Resources
This type of resource can be used again and again and will never run out, like the sun or wind.
What is a renewable resource?
Coal forms from these organisms that decayed in swamps millions of years ago.
What are plants?
In the cookie mining lab, the chocolate chips represented this nonrenewable resource.
What is coal?
These panels, made of semiconductor materials, convert sunlight directly into electricity.
What are photovoltaic (PV) panels or solar panels?
A Sankey diagram uses these visual elements with varying widths to represent the flow and quantity of energy or resources. In the cookie mining lab, whole, clean, intact chocolate chips could be sold to the bank for this amount.
What are arrows or flows?
Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are examples of this type of resource that takes millions of years to form.
What are fossil fuels (or nonrenewable resources)?
Oil and natural gas were created from these tiny organisms that died and fell to the ocean floor.
What are sea plants and animals (or marine organisms)?
These are three environmental impacts of mining mentioned in the materials.
What are deforestation/habitat loss, water pollution, air pollution, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, or landscape alteration? (accept any three)
This renewable energy source uses the movement of water stored in reservoirs behind dams to generate electricity.
What is hydroelectric power (or hydroelectric energy)?
In an energy Sankey diagram, the width of each flow is proportional to this characteristic of the energy being transferred.
What is the quantity or amount of energy?
This is the United States' main source of energy according to current usage patterns.
What are fossil fuels (or natural gas/petroleum)?
These two factors, combined with time, transformed buried organic remains into fossil fuels.
What are heat and pressure?
This is the process of attempting to restore mined land back to a usable condition after mining operations are complete.
What is reclamation?
These machines convert wind's kinetic energy into electrical energy using blades that turn a rotor connected to a generator.
What are wind turbines?
When analyzing a Sankey diagram of U.S. energy consumption, the thickest arrow coming into the system would represent this type of energy source.
What are fossil fuels (or the primary energy source)?
This nonrenewable energy source is considered the most sustainable because it produces large amounts of energy with minimal greenhouse gas emissions during operation.
What is nuclear energy?
This extraction method involves injecting high-pressure fluid into underground rocks to release oil or natural gas.
What is fracking (or hydraulic fracturing)?
This 1977 federal law prohibits surface coal mining within the boundaries of any unit of the National Park System.
What is the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA)?
This renewable energy source comes from the Earth's internal heat and can provide constant energy regardless of weather conditions.
What is geothermal energy?
In a Sankey diagram showing energy transformation in a power plant, these represent energy that is lost and not converted to useful electricity, often shown flowing away from the main process.
What are waste heat or energy losses?
These organic materials like crop residues, wood chips, and animal waste can be combusted to produce heat and electricity, making them a renewable resource.
What is biomass?
Coal formed in these types of environments on land, while oil and gas formed from these types of deposits.
What are swampy areas (coal) and marine deposits (oil and gas)?
Mining disrupts the carbon cycle by doing these two specific things to increase atmospheric CO₂.
What is releasing stored carbon from fossil fuels and disrupting carbon-storing vegetation?
In a nuclear power plant, this process generates heat in the reactor, which then creates steam to drive turbines and produce electricity.
What is nuclear fission?
A Sankey diagram comparing renewable and nonrenewable energy sources would show this visual difference between the two categories based on current U.S. energy usage patterns.
What is a much thicker flow for nonrenewable sources compared to renewable sources (or nonrenewable sources dominating the diagram)?