Car Wars 2030
Car Wars 2030
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Description
What energy source will power students' cars in the future: Electricity? Hydrogen? Biofuel? This short activity gets students to consider efficiency, environmental and economic implications of each energy source to judge which will be most popular in 2030.
Blueprint curriculum link
- Atmosphere: Earth's atmosphere
- Skill: Consider different perspectives
Activity contents
- Teachers guide
- PDF file
The activity is delivered as a zip file. After you checkout, you will be sent an email with the link to download it.
Running Notes
Slide 2: Introduce the task: to choose an energy source for their first car in 2030.
Slide 3: Ask them to think of it like a race between the four energy sources. Ask the class: which of these energy sources have you heard of? Which do you think is currently the most popular? Click on the button to reveal that oil is currently way out in front, with electricity in second place.
Slide 4: Reveal a recent headline – that the UK government is going to ban the sale of new cars with combustion engines (those that burn petrol, diesel or biofuel) in 2030. Discuss with the class why – it is because they release carbon dioxide when the fuel in the engine burns.
Slide 5: Reveal that oil and biofuel are now out of the race, so it is down to electricity and hydrogen. Clicking on the cars will reveal more information about each. There are optional extras in the weblinks that you can use to teach more about each energy source at this point.
Slide 6: Introduce how they will decide between the two remaining energy sources. Give each pair/group a copy of SS1 and SS2. They follow the instructions to award points to each energy source and work out the winner. You can use slide 10 to check they have assigned the cards to the right places in the table before they calculate their points.
Discuss with the class why they think things might change in the future – why might the other car be the winner? What things could change?
Weblinks
I ran this with Yr 7s - 9, off different ability. Really easy to differentiate by outcome, all students were fully engaged. I needed ear plugs for top set yr 7!!
This was great for my mixed ability Y8 class. They were thoughtfully engaged.
Fantastic, the pupils were very engaged, it was though provoking and gained lots of discussion. The matching activity allowed pupils to come to a well thought through conclusion.
We use these resources as part of a superlearning day, educating students to consider buying electric cars. The resrouces help the students consider hydrogen as a potential other alternative; so helpful to have.
The car wars project that has started a few weeks ago really inspired students to create more questions in science. It engaged them and motivated them to learn. They have been making question using data and pictures. Most of learning in science is based on using concepts but students were really motivated to learn how to create interesting question this is really working with students, which are more visual learners who want to discuss and use hands on rather then just learning concepts in the classroom.
More Information: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/news/18746