Grade 3-5
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Lesson

From Power Plant to PlayStation™: Electricity’s Journey from Producer to Consumer

Time: 45 mins,
Updated: July 10 2024,
Author: Angie Battle

Objective

The student will be able to:

  • identify natural, human, and capital resources used to produce and distribute electricity to consumers.
  • Identify the process of generating and distributing electricity for consumer use.
  • explain that consumers (in their homes and businesses) voluntarily exchange money for the electricity produced by power plants.
  • explain that electric companies pay for productive resources to produce electricity using money from consumers who purchased their product.

Description

Students learn about the different types of productive resources—natural resources, human resources, and capital goods. After watching a video and seeing pictures of productive resources used to generate electricity, they categorize them into the different types.  They then sequence the process of how electricity arrives at a home to play video games by attaching a series of cards to a power line (string stretched between two students) along with the productive resources used in the process. Finally, they identify how consumers voluntarily exchange money for electricity and electric companies as producers use the money to purchase productive resources to generate electricity.

Subjects:
Economics