EP Meeting 9/21/2011 - Useful Energy Episodes

This meeting discussed two episodes about teacher's perceptions of what it means to have useful energy.  It was pretty incredible to have all of these talented people show up to watch my episodes and share their responses. First, we looked at Jessica's Useful Energy video from E1, where she discusses Shrinking People to represent the usefulness of the energy.  I am going to write down a random assortment of people's reactions to this episode.
1. Rachel suggested Jessica's suggestion might be a secret form of being "less" energy and whether Jessica really understood it to mean not as much usefulness as opposed to not as much energy.  Lezlie/others thought that even if Jessica knew this - students might not.  Lezlie said that we have seen students interpret less energy with stature in the past already.  Here, Jessica was worried that the opposite might be true.
2. Stamatis was concerned with what "usefulness" actually means for the teachers (and for us).  We talked at length about what the ultimate reason was for the energy and perhaps that teachers might think that the order of energy use matters.  For example, if the energy appears in a certain form at the end of a process, that form might be the most useful...?  Teachers might think that the energy that doesn't "do" the thing you were setting out to do is not as useful - even if it is used in the process.
Other ideas mentioned were:
-  that's not why you were doing it - (so it must be less useful)
- the turbine moving in the coal burning example is more observable, - Lane

- things that are moving and electricity are viewed as useful - Sam

- anything that you have a use for is useful! -Rachel

3. Amy asked how much of this is an association of entropy? Lane said if you don't use thermal energy, it will disperse and "go away."  At this point we started making a list of:

What makes energy less useful?

a. Less useful by changing form - Jessica
b. less useful by spreading out
c. by using it
d. increase in energy ?
e. can't be stored
f. can't be controlled
g. becomes less available


Care should be taken not to make it sound like it is always a one way street - as in it always becomes less useful - unless we are intentionally planning to state that.

4. Both the way usefulness is talked about and Azzam's control comments bring up a human element of use.  We talked about quality vs. usefulness next.  Quality - not requiring humans - Usefulness - what is supposed to be done with it.  Sam and Stamatis brought up the idea that the teachers and ET need constraints.  Jessica thinks that you can't run the movie backwards - she needs/wants the constraint in place. Two constraints that are not there that Stamatis wants are: 1. Can't have Gs--> Ts and 2. How do we show the irreversibility of ET?


5. We watched the second episode - Derrick's talk of the quality of energy from E2, briefly before closing.  Line 40 was discussed (Derrick uses "liberate") - Lane says, 'Run free, little ball, run free!'
Line 38 Tim says the thermal is gone which is a dead end comment!
Line 51 Derrick says, "less that's available to you" and we ended with the big question,
"What is it that makes energy more or less useful?" 

Talk about a great question!  Thanks everyone for the rich discussion!