Hi, I’m Masha Yulanova and I’m a I am a capacity planning engineer for ComEd. 

ComEd makes sure the electricity, or power, is delivered to the people. 

 But, where does that power come from?  

In this lesson we’re going taking a closer look at energy sources that can be used to generate the electricity we use to power our homes and businesses, to heat our homes, cook our food, and even power our vehicles. 

Energy is defined as power used over a sustained period of time, it is the ability to produce change or do work, and that work can be divided into several main tasks we easily recognize: For example, 
energy produces light, heat, motion, sound, growth, and powers technology.

People have always used energy to do work for them. 

Humans burned wood to provide light, heat their living spaces, and cook their food.

 People used the wind to move their boats from place to place. And today, people use more energy than ever from a variety of sources for many different tasks. 

Our homes are comfortable and full of useful and entertaining electrical devices.

 We communicate instantaneously in many ways. We live longer, healthier lives. We travel the world, or at least see it on tv.

The major energy sources we use today are classified into two groups—nonrenewable and renewable. 

Nonrenewable energy sources include coal, petroleum, natural gas, propane. 

They are used to generate electricity, to heat our homes, to move our cars, and to manufacture products from candy bars to cell phones. 

These energy sources are called nonrenewable because they cannot be replenished in a short period of time. 

These resources took hundreds of thousands, even hundreds of millions of years to form into the sources that provide us enough power for our daily tasks! 

Renewable energy sources include biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar power, and wind. 

They are called renewable energy sources because their supplies are replenished in a short time. 

Day after day, the sun shines, the wind blows, and the rivers flow and these energy sources continue generating more. 

Another exciting thing about renewable energy is that it typically used less carbon than most kinds of nonrenewable energy. 
That really important when we start to think about climate change when we consider that carbon emissions are the main factor.

 We use renewable energy sources mainly to make electricity. 

Every day, the average American uses about as much energy as is stored in a little more than seven gallons of gasoline. 

That’s every person, every day. 

Over a course of one year, the sum of this energy is equal to a little more than 2,500 gallons of gasoline per person. 

Using  energy is also called energy consumption.

To get us thinking about our energy use and how renewable and nonrenewable sources play a part in our daily energy consumption, we’re going to play a game called Candy Collector. 

For this game, you’ll need two types of candy, be sure to keep small candies out of the reach of small children. 

I’m using M&Ms and jellybeans today. 

You’ll also need a straw for each person you’re going to play the game with, 3 bowls or plates. 

And This game works best with small groups of up to 4 people.  

Now let’s imagine that we are trying to recover or take energy away from the earth to use in my neighborhood to do things like turn our lights on. 

I’m going to start with 50 m &ms in my first bowl which represents energy from the earth. 

I’m going to pretend as if the 50 candies are the energy I could possibly recover.

 I’m going to use only my straw,  not my hands to try and recover energy for 1 year, but for the game’s sake, a  year will be 15 seconds.
 
I will transfer any energy I can from the earth into my energy recovery tank, like so. 

After 15 seconds, I’ll stop, take a count of what I recovered, and mark it down on my graph. 

For the purposes of this video I will be making my graph using excel but at home you can use paper and pen.

After I mark it on my graph, I’ll move any candy from the recovery tank to the discard tank, because that energy has been consumed by people in my neighborhood and I can’t get any more.  
Now we are going to do year 1 of using non-renewable energy sources together and see how much energy we can consume. 
So, starting my timer for 15 seconds, lets see how much energy we can consume.

And that’s it. 

So, lets see how many we got. 1, 2 3, 4, 5,6,7. 

We got 7 m &m’s in our energy recovery tank.  

Now that we have marked our year one results on our graph, we are then going to move all of our M&M’s from our recovery tank over to our discarded tank as we can no longer use that energy as it’s a non-renewable energy source. 

I’m going to keep extracting and discarding energy for three more “years” and continue graphing what I recovered. 

I can probably also predict how many more years my energy will last for my neighbors.

After 4 years have passed, place all of your candy back into the original bowl or plate. 

Let’s start a second round, this time I realized that I only need a small amount of energy per person in my neighborhood and we have discovered new energy sources. 

So, we’re going to place 3 jellybeans into our bowl with the 50 M&Ms. 

Alright so I have 3 jellybeans, a pink one, a multicolor, and a blue one.

We’re going to recover our energy in the same way, but we only need to recover 2 pieces of candy per resident in our neighborhood. 

If you’re working with a family member, you’ll need to make sure you recover enough in the 15 seconds so that there are 2 candies per person in your recovery tank.

For this new round, we’ll make a new graph, and after each round, discard the M&Ms. 

However, the jellybeans can be returned to the original bowl, earth, for the next year’s energy recovery and consumption, this represents renewable energy.  

So, for round 2, this is what you will be doing.

Once you and your team have completed the 4 years of round 2, it’s time to share your work with ComEd! 

Submit a video to STEMNeverStops@comed.com that shares your graph and answers the following questions: 

How long would your energy last using round 1 rules? 

Predict how long would your energy last using round 2 rules?
Using what you learned in this activity, define the term renewable energy source. 

Using what you learned in this activity, define the term nonrenewable energy source. 

Which candy represents renewable energy sources? 

Describe a challenge or problem you experienced in this activity and relate it to energy use in the real world. 

Be sure to include your parent or guardian in the email address line of your video submission. 

Have fun collecting your candy energy!