Physics game: forms of energy, transformations and efficiency
A physics game for following energy around. On easy you say what form of energy something has or stores (a battery, a drawn bow, water behind a dam, a hot cup) and what a device turns it into: a light bulb, a fan, a solar panel, a dynamo, a set of brakes. On medium there are chains of several steps with a missing link, like a hydroelectric power station’s (potential → kinetic → electrical) or a bike with a dynamo and lamp. On hard you calculate: a device’s efficiency, the energy lost as heat and the potential energy Ep = m·g·h of something up high, which turns into kinetic energy as it falls.
Physics · Primary, Secondary
Kinetic, potential, elastic, chemical, electrical, thermal, light, sound and nuclear, always with everyday objects and devices. The explanation for each answer says why that situation has that form of energy, which is what science exams ask for.
A bulb gives light but also heat; a moving car also carries chemical energy in its tank. Those forms that would also be partly true never appear as wrong options, so there is always a single right answer and nobody loses a point for overthinking.
What goes in equals what is useful plus what is lost, and efficiency is useful ÷ total × 100. With the stone up high you check that potential energy becomes kinetic as it falls. The wrong options are the typical slips: forgetting gravity or the ×100.
"A hydroelectric power station’s chain appears: potential → ? → electrical. The water in the dam is up high (potential); as it falls through the pipes it moves and turns the turbines (kinetic), and the generator turns that into electricity. The missing link is kinetic energy. Along the way, some is lost as heat through friction."
Prefer to learn without screens? Try this analogue version:
Go round your home and note ten devices that run on electricity or batteries.
For each one, write which energy it takes in and which it turns it into.
Carefully touch the ones that have been on for a while: which get warm? That is the energy being lost.
Rank them from the one that wastes most energy to the one that wastes least.
If you like Energy Chain, these activities work similar skills:
Multiple choice on forms of energy, their transformations, renewable and non-renewable sources and saving energy, with an explanation for each answer.
Another physics game: predict which bulbs light up in series, parallel and mixed circuits.
Drop a ball from one metre and measure how high it bounces. It never gets back to the same height: where has that energy gone?
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