VisibEL is a tangible map of Sweden modelling the electricity production. There are cities, placeable power plants and factories that can be connected to the power grid. It is an educational game which is based on scenarios. The main users are children between the ages of nine and twelve. By playing this game, children can learn about different types of power plants, how much energy they produce and how much they cost to build and run...
Please visit our website and visit us at the exibition IDXPO at Lindholmen Science Park.

Friday, 12 February 2010

Energy grid

Since I'm not going to attend the monday meeting I thought I'd share my view of the energy/power idea.
I envision a physical "sim city", but with stuff like power plants of different types(Nuclear, water, solar, wind etc). They have different characteristics and drawbacks like different amount of power produced, different cost of electricity, different amounts of pollution, nuclear waste etc.
The power plants are connected by an electricity grid to houses and industry that uses the electricity. The more electricity is used the more power plants needs to be connected and the more pollution and other bad effects will appear.
This could be made as a model landscape with little powerplants and houses that you can connect to the power grid. There should also be a display or some other solution to indicate pollution and energy use.
The lessoned learned should be a better understanding for how electricity is generated and also what the effects are if we use a lot of it.

Another very different direction would be to explain generators that is the basis for all electricity generation and maybe show the similarity to electric motors. Also powering a generator with "muscle force" could give a sense of how much energy is needed to drive different things.

2 comments:

  1. I like this iead.This "game" is possible to involve many users, to compete with each other: whose "city" is the most "clean" one, or even "city" can communicate with "city" somehow.This is a popular and "undeveloped" area in education.Could be a nice start for our project.I guess kids like to creat their own city and paly with that.

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  2. An usfull link here:Where electricity come from
    http://www.mercury.co.nz/education/education_whatisenergy_wheredoeselectricitycomefrom.asp

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