Fossil Fuel Hunt Adapted from “Fossil Fuels and the Ticking Clock” At

Issue 7: Energy and the Polar Environment http://beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/

Fossil Fuel Hunt adapted from “Fossil Fuels and the Ticking Clock” at www.powerhousekids.com

You’ve been hired by an energy company to find coal deposits. The coal you find will be burned to produce electricity for homes and businesses.

Coal and natural gas are known as fossil fuels. They are formed from the remains of ancient plants and animals. When the plants and animals died and became buried deep in the earth, the heat and pressure of the earth’s layers slowly transformed them into coal, natural gas, and oil.

In this activity, you will search for pennies four times. You only have 30 seconds to search each time! After each search, you will count the pennies, record the total, and deposit them in the correctly numbered cup.

After the fourth search, you will recount each cup of pennies one at a time, and make a bar graph to show the number of pennies you found in each search.

First search: ______

Second search: ______

Third search: ______

Fourth search: ______

Copyright 2008: Ohio State University. Funded by the National Science Foundation. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Issue 7: Energy and the Polar Environment http://beyondpenguins.nsdl.org/

35 Number of pennies found 25

1st 2nd 3rd 4th search search search search

Questions:

1. In which search did you find the most pennies? 2. In which search did you find the least pennies? 3. Why do you think it became increasingly harder to find pennies? 4. Did your strategy for finding pennies change as it became harder to find pennies? How? 5. What does this activity tell you about fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas?