EC - Energy Consumption Module Overview
Ecological Interactions
Introduction
In environmental science, energy is often talked about in the terms of food webs and food chains. But what about the other that humans use to do work every day?
What does the energy used to run your computer look like? Drive your car? Where does this energy come from?
Energy is an underlying theme in environmental science because it is responsible for making changes and the maintenance of all processes on Earth. But what happens if that energy runs out?
Our ability to capture and convert energy into more usable forms has helped shape human society. Now we face a growing need for alternative energy sources and innovative technologies.
Module Lessons Preview
In this module, we will study the following topics:
Energy Consumption
Non-Renewable Resources
Renewable Resources
Electricity Usage in the United States
Key Terms
- Atom - a source of nuclear energy
- Biomass - organic matter used as a fuel, especially in a power station for the generation of electricity
- Biofuel - a fuel derived directly from living matter
- Coal - a combustible black or dark brown rock consisting mainly of carbonized plant matter, found mainly in underground deposits and widely used as fuel
- Crude oil - unrefined petroleum
- Electrical energy - an electric charge that lets work be accomplished
- Energy - the ability to do work or bring about a change and exists in many forms, such as heat, light, chemical energy, and electrical energy
- Energy efficiency - a measure of input to output of desired energy often represented as a percentage
- Fossil fuels - a natural fuel such as coal or gas, formed in the geological past from the remains of living organisms
- Fuel - any material that can release energy in a chemical change
- Fuel cell - a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent
- Hydraulic fracking - injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc., so as to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas
- Kilocalorie – kCal is the term used to represent the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a liter of water one degree centigrade at sea level. In nutrition terms, the word calorie is commonly used to refer to a unit of food energy
- Mechanical Energy - is the sum of kinetic and potential energy in an object that is used to do work. In other words, it is energy in an object due to its motion or position, or both
- Natural gas - flammable gas, consisting largely of methane and other hydrocarbons, occurring naturally underground (often in association with petroleum) and used as fuel
- Nonrenewable - something has a definite supply and or cannot be remade to be used within a short period time
- Nuclear fission - nuclear reaction or a radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts, often producing free neutrons and photons in the form of gamma rays, and releasing a very large amount of energy
- Nuclear Power - electricity generated through the use nuclear energy (fission) inside a nuclear reactor
- Petroleum - a liquid mixture of hydrocarbons that can be extracted and refined to produce fuels including gasoline, kerosene, and diesel oil
- Reservoir - a supply or source of something
- Renewable - something that can be remade to be used within a short period of time
- Work - happens when energy is transferred from one system to another
- Thermal Energy - is the internal energy of an object due to the kinetic energy of its atoms and/or molecules
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