Choose a purpose
Motors provide motion, lamps provide light and heaters provide useful heating.
Energy Journey Builder
Build an energy journey and account for useful outputs and other heat.
Grades 3–5 · Physics
Your goal
Build a battery to motor journey with standard equipment. Transfer 40 J to get 30 J of motion and 10 J of other heat.
Reduced motion is on. The controls still update the scene.
Original 100 J equals 100 J remaining plus 0.0 J of light plus 0.0 J of other heat. Equipment sends 25 percent of each transferred packet to the useful output.
Changing the journey prepares a fresh 100 J supply of electrical input. How each source produces that supply is outside this model's boundary. Useful output depends on the purpose of the converter. A heater's intended output is heating, so both heater designs count all input as useful heating. Motors and lamps also transfer energy as other heat. Efficiencies are illustrative fixed fractions, and no energy disappears.
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Learn with Energy Journey Builder
Energy Journey Builder helps elementary students follow energy through a complete accounting picture. Choose a battery, solar panel or wind turbine as the electrical source, select a motor, lamp or heater, and transfer energy in ten-joule packets. Compare standard and improved equipment while watching the useful output and other heat stores grow. The remaining supply and both outputs always total the original energy. Guided goals encourage children to describe useful energy by its purpose and explain that energy transferred as unwanted heat still belongs in the total.
What to look for
Transfer small packets
Each press sends 10 J from the available electrical supply into the converter.
Keep every joule
Remaining input, useful output and other heat always add to the original 100 J.
For teachers and curious learners
Track energy conservation as electrical input becomes useful output and heat. Ask students to predict what will happen, change one setting, and explain what they observe. Learn gives a starting point. Practice and Challenge offer new goals with the same scene.
Each journey starts with 100 J of electrical input supplied by the chosen source. Source generation lies outside the model boundary. Fixed illustrative converter efficiencies split each 10 J packet; useful heater output counts as heating rather than other heat.