Solar Power
These shiny blue or black rectangles are usually found on roofs and turn sunlight directly into electricity.
What are solar panels?
These giant structures have three blades that spin around when the wind blows.
What are wind turbines?
Instead of burning fuel, nuclear plants create a massive amount of this to boil water into steam.
What is heat?
Hydroelectric plants use the energy from this moving substance to spin a turbine.
What is water?
Coal is found deep underground and is formed from the squished remains of these ancient things.
What are plants (or ferns/swamps)?
Solar energy is called this type of resource because the sun will never run out of "fuel" for us to use.
What is a renewable resource?
This part of the turbine sits behind the blades and contains the magnets and copper wire that actually create the electricity.
What is a generator?
his is the scientific name for "splitting" an atom's center to release energy.
What is fission?
Most hydro power is made by building one of these massive walls across a river.
hat is a dam?
Because it takes millions of years to form, coal is known as this type of "limited" resource.
What is a non-renewable resource?
This is the specific name for the tiny particles of light that hit a solar panel to get electrons moving.
What are photons?
A group of many wind turbines built together in the same field or in the ocean.
What is a wind farm?
One tiny pellet of nuclear fuel (size of an eraser) can create as much energy as one ton of this black fossil fuel.
What is coal?
This is the name of the man-made "lake" that forms behind a dam to store water.
What is a reservoir?
When coal is burned, it creates this gas that is the main cause of global warming.
What is carbon dioxide ($CO_2$)?
While most panels are on roofs, this is a huge collection of them built in a wide-open, sunny area.
What is a solar farm?
To get the most energy, engineers build turbines very high up because the wind is this way the higher you go.
What is stronger (or faster)?
These tall, curvy towers at nuclear plants aren't releasing smoke; they are actually releasing this harmless gas.
What is water vapor (or steam)?
Dams can be tough on the environment because they block these animals from swimming upstream to lay eggs.
What are fish (like salmon)?
This is the primary state in the U.S. known for mining the most coal.
What is Wyoming?
To use solar power at night, houses often need to store the extra energy they made during the day in these devices.
What are batteries?
This is the name for the invisible "push" or force that wind exerts on the blades to make them spin, similar to an airplane wing.
What is lift?
This is the name for the center of an atom that holds all the nuclear energy.
What is the nucleus?
This is the most iconic Dam in the United States
What is the Hoover Dam?
To clean the smoke before it leaves the plant, these machines "wash" the air to remove chemicals like sulfur.
What are scrubbers?