Working with State, National, and Global Petroleum Data
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students work with data on oil production in Illinois, the United States, and the world, creating graphs to interpret data on ...

Capstone Project
This educational resource page presents a capstone project for an undergraduate course on renewable energy and environmental sustainability, featuring a systems-thinking assignment where students design a sustainable community using technologies from prior modules, supported by a detailed assessment rubric and peer-reviewed instructional content from the InTeGrate and On the Cutting Edge programs. auto-generated The author of this page didn't provide a brief description so this one sentence summary was created by an AI tool. It may not be completely accurate.

5. Passive Designs
In this module, we consider how the actual design and placement of buildings can be important considerations for energy efficiency, thereby optimizing winter heating and summer cooling needs. One of the simplest ...

6. Energy from and to the Earth
This module compares the spatial availability of geothermal resources for heating and cooling and evaluates different ground exchange systems for practical application. The operation of enhanced geothermal systems ...

Justice, Power, and Activism: What the Goldman Environmental Prize Winners Teach Us About Resilience and Democracy
This activity is a set of student-centered exercises that enable students to learn about the individual stories of Goldman environmental prize winners, the activism and organizing that grounds their work, and the underlying political and social contexts from which their struggles emerge. The lesson inspires critical reflection about justice, power, and democracy in green politics, and encourages ways to make personal connections to activism and environmental work.

Unit 6: Carbon Emissions Game
In this unit, students play a game, a variation on the "Pollution Game" (Corrigan 2011), to develop an appreciation of the pros and cons of the commonly discussed policy options for carbon abatement ...

Unit 7: Climate Change from the Socio-Environmental Systems Perspective
This unit summarizes and synthesizes the previous six units by inviting students to reflect on their experiences throughout the module, identify key learning moments and consider how these events influenced their ...

Biomass conversion into highly useful chemicals
This is CURE based course that aims at bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge in chemistry and its practical applications at solving real-world problems. It gives students an opportunity to construct and synthesize their knowledge and skills by learning to apply theoretical knowledge to practice by the laboratory research. The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the fundamental concepts of chemistry, synthetic methods and techniques. The emphasis will be on novel catalysts synthesis and evaluating their activity towards biomass conversion to liquid fuel and useful chemicals. Students will design synthesize, deduce identities of the biomass conversion products from chemical and spectral clues, and predict reaction products.

2. Using Wind to do Work
This module shows students how wind (atmospheric circulation) is produced from solar radiation, gravity, and the spinning of Earth. It then develops the history of how humans have harnessed the power of the wind, ...

1. Electricity, Work, and Power
This module is designed to prepare students to better understand the other modules in the course. It is a review of basic high school-level physics, reminding students of the fundamentals of energy, work, power, ...

3. Thermal Energy from Light
In this module, students learn the basic principles and techniques involved with converting solar radiation to useful heat. They explore the concepts of temperature and heat, and the physical basis for solar ...

Unit 6: Moving Forward: Evaluating Impacts of Modern-day Proposals Affecting the Carbon-cycle and Climate
In this unit, students will review mock proposals that deal with some aspect of the role of carbon in the environment. Each proposal is based on actual actions proposed to mitigate some aspect of carbon consumption ...

Unit 2: The Carbon Cycle
Students will explore the different aspects of the carbon cycle on Earth. This includes the original source of all the carbon on our planet, the near ubiquity of carbon, the six principle reservoirs of carbon in ...

Unit 5: Modern CO2 Accumulation
Students will examine data that record the modern increase in carbon dioxide concentrations and the associated increase in average temperatures, and they will investigate the effects of carbon dioxide on various ...

Unit 3: Geologic Record of Past Climate
Students will be introduced to a few of the different methods used in paleoclimatology, including isotopic ratios as paleotemperature proxies. They will investigate the greenhouse gas connections of two ancient ...

Unit 4: Fossil Fuel Formation
Students will explore various aspects of fossil fuels by examining the various ranks of coal and the processes by which coal, oil, and natural gas form.

10. Energy from Biofuels
This unit explores the historic, current, and potential use of biomass for the production of energy. Various bio fuels are introduced, and students are reminded of the role of biomass in the development of ...

How Households in 4 Different U.S. States Use Energy
Students use energy information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration in 2009 (most recent household compilation) in a jigsaw activity. Each student examines usage in a particular state and then the group ...

Design an electric utility resource plan for 2025 and beyond
Students will design the integration of renewable or carbon neutral energy sources into the electricity generation mix of an example utility. The structure is a budget or a design or maybe even a puzzle where all ...

Renewable Energy Virtual Field Trip
This is a virtual field trip on the subject of renewable energy. The Google Earth slideshow will take you around the world to different key renewable energy sites across the world. Each site will have a quick ...