This animated video explains how batteries can play a key role in a sustainable and low-carbon future.
Students will learn about the history of the lithium-ion battery as well as the potential challenges and downsides of relying predominantly on battery power.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The animations and tone of the video are engaging.
It cites specific examples of the positive effects of battery power in Bihar, India, and Brooklyn, New York.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should understand the current limitations of renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
Students should understand why carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere hurt the environment.
Differentiation
Students can explore links to related videos about batteries at the bottom of the page. The article on Norway's circular battery economy would be an especially interesting read for economics classes.
Students can research scientists and organizations working on enhancing the battery's storage capacity, recycling options, carbon footprint, and social justice implications.
Other resources related to these topics include this video about iron flow batteries, this video about lithium, and this video about energy storage.
Scientist Notes
This resource accentuates the role of lithium-ion batteries in powering the energy sector. Insight into how this battery could transition the world to a clean and low-carbon future is provided in this resource. The resource also provides a background for more research to enhance battery storage capacity and recycling options that are sustainable and eco-friendly. This resource is ideal for the classroom.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-2 Evaluate competing design solutions for developing, managing, and utilizing energy and mineral resources based on cost-benefit ratios.
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
ETS1: Engineering Design
HS-ETS1-3 Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
PS1: Matter and its Interactions
MS-PS1-3 Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: History
D2.His.14.6-8 Explain multiple causes and effects of events and developments in the past.
