Maurice Crawford: Using Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore

For all units:

Collecting data during each module was a critical part of the course. I would record all the data on the classroom board and briefly discuss it before the end of class. I feel this helped the students understand that every experiment has some variation associated with it (i.e. make the students more comfortable with the data) and that experiments do not always go as planned. It also was helpful if students missed a class because then I could provide them with the data and then they could write up the results.

Unit 1: Electricity, Work, and Power

If you are having difficulty pulling the material together for this, I suggest looking to the physics department. For example, my first electromagnet actually did not work very well; subsequently I was able to borrow one from the physics department.

Unit 2: Using Wind to do Work

I did not have access to sails, but used the web-based portion of this module where students learned what areas are amenable to wind energy. I also created a short presentation for the start of the class that helped generate discussion.

Unit 3: Thermal Energy from Light

I ran this module as designed with the exception of using a solar cooker.

Unit 4: Creating Electricity from Light

I was able to enhance this activity with real-time data from UMES' solar farm, where the outputs from it can be accessed via a web page.

Unit 5: Passive Design

The first time I ran the lab, I did it outdoors. The second time, it was a bit too cool to be outside, but I was in a lab with southern-facing windows and conducted it inside; this actually re-enforced how the concept of orientation of a building is used in passive design. Also at UMES we toured the new Engineering and Aviation Science building that incorporated several green technologies.

Unit 6: Energy from and to Earth

I ran this module as designed but was able to supplement it with some plate tectonic animations from my marine science course.

Unit 7: Better Ways to Illuminate

We did not have light readers for this particular module, so the students measured the temperature changes and then substituted the lumen ratings of the bulbs for the light readings.

Unit 8: Efficiency and Conservation

This was an example of one of the labs where the variation in the temperatures was not what we expected, and that led to further discussions on how experiments are designed.

Unit 9: Hybrid and Electric Car

I only had a few students enroll in the course, so I was able to fit all the students into a colleague's Prius. If you cannot do that, there are some YouTube videos that may provide a similar experience.

Unit 10: Energy from Biofuel

Unit 11: Composting Toilets

This particular module needs to be set up at the beginning or mid-way through the semester for the composting worms to grow and create compost.