Energy Industry Knowledge

PRESENTER 1 (Old black and white film of a science teacher): Now you boys and girls in the classroom should be very interested in science about energy because energy is everywhere. And

THEME MUSIC: Bill Nye, the science guy! Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Nye, the science guy. Science rules. Bill Nye, the science guy. Inertia is a property of matter. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Nye, the science guy.

There is a shot of a box of cereal called “Invigorateies” with milk and OJ. The voice says: Brought to you by Invigoraties, energy for champions.

BILL NYE: When we do something, like open a door, we're using energy. Electrical energy makes this door go up.

[MECHANICAL VOICE] Malfunction.

BILL NYE: Up.

[MECHANICAL VOICE] Malfunction.

BILL NYE: Well, I can open the door another way, with another form of energy. The energy of my muscles.

[MECHANICAL VOICE] Energize.

BILL NYE: See, energy comes in all different forms, like sound is energy. Heat is energy. Falling things have energy. When we move our muscles, that takes energy. Electricity is energy.

And energy can be converted from one form to another. Energy is what makes things go, run or happen. So let's make something happen, say with this big box of water. (There is a tank of water elevated about 5 feet above the floor). So when we filled this box, we lifted them up here. And when we did, we gave it some energy.

Think about it. You have to work to lift a bucket of water. So when you lift it, the energy of lifting is stored up here. I'll prove it to you. When we open this valve, water flows downhill and runs this little propeller. The propeller spins and runs a little generator, which makes a small amount of electricity. It runs through this wire and makes this needle move.

Some of our electricity is made by falling water at huge dams that have huge propellers. When energy is stored, we call it potential energy. It has the potential to do something. When it's moving, we call it kinetic energy. Kinetic means moving.

Now, this setup converts the potential energy that we put into the water by lifting it to a form of kinetic energy, the energy of the flow. And the flowing water makes electrical energy. Kinetic energy was converted to electrical energy. Energy was changed from one form to another. Not bad.

PRESENTER 3 (old black and white film with toy cars moving past fake skyscrapers): Now, what would happen if suddenly there were no energy in the world? Well, first of all, there would be no electricity throughout the day. And then the wind wouldn't blow anymore, so the clouds would stop moving and the flag would stop blowing.

Movement. There would be no more movement. The cars wouldn't move. As a matter of fact, all the lights would go out, cold, dark, dead world. But lucky for us, we don't have to worry about that, because energy is everywhere.

PRESENTER 4 (Man on TV talking to a kid laying on a couch): Hey friends, are you like a lump on the plastic-covered couch, all potential energy? Do you dream of someday taking charge and fulfilling the kinetic energy? You--

BILL NYE: Hey, Terry, check this out. (winding a rubber band on a toy airplane) It's an energy demonstration. As I wind up this propeller, the rubber band stores energy. And that energy can be released and make the airplane fly.

PRESENTER 5 (Child doing an experiment): Here, I have some vinegar and some baking soda. And I'm going to mix them together and see what happens.

Video of large rockets taking off.

Just add a half a cup of vinegar to a half a cup of water.

Then put a teaspoon of baking soda onto a coffee filter. Then roll the coffee filter up, and twist the end really tight.

Now put the coffee filter in the bottom of the bottle. Put the cork on as tightly as you can. And hit the dirt!

(Bubbles start to form in the bottle, the cork flies off and foam pours out of the bottle.)

PRESENTER 1(an old black and white film of a teacher doing the same experiment): OK, put the top on. Shake it up. It popped right off.

PRESENTER 5: The baking soda and vinegar caused a chemical reaction that builds up pressure inside the bottle. The cork pops off because the chemical energy changed to moving energy.

PRESENTER 1: Energy makes things move. It made that cork move off before we had a chance to show it to you.

PRESENTER 5: It makes things go.

PRESENTER 1: It makes things move.

PRESENTER 5: It changes form. Its energy, energy, energy, energy.

PRESENTER 1: So I think that we might, at this time, say that energy makes things move.

CHILDREN: Energy makes things go.

PRESENTER 1: Makes things move.

(person walking around and around through a rotating door)

PRESENTER 1: Energy makes things move.

CHILDREN: Wheel of Energy! (a large spinning wheel with a man strapped to it. The wheel resembles the wheel in “The Wheel of Fortune” game show.)

KEN ETIC: Howdy, folks. I'm Ken Etic, your host. And I'm here with the ever-energetic Violet Light. You all know the rules. We spin the wheel of energy. And we change one type of energy into to another type. OK, Violet, convert some chemical energy into kinetic energy. And give the wheel a spin!

[DRUMROLL]

Man on a wheel that is spinning around: Ah, ah! Ah, yeah. Aaah!

KEN ETIC: Now that's what I call sound energy.

PRESENTER 1 with a boy blowing through a conch shell: I think you can see why we call him Mr. Sound Energy. He's like that all day long, that's for sure.

MAN on the wheel: Aaah!

BILL NYE holding a bowling ball directly in front of his face. The ball is connected to the ceiling with a string: Right now, this bowling ball has energy. It's not moving, but it's got energy. Please consider the following. You ready? Three, two, one, whoa! (he lets the ball go. It swung forward and then back narrowly missing Bill Nye’s face)

It looked like it was going to smack me right in the head, didn't it? I mean, it's a bowling ball. It would have knocked me pretty good. But it will never hit you in the head, because when we pulled the bowling ball back from the middle, we gave it potential energy.

When we let go of it, it had kinetic energy. The kinetic energy will never be bigger than the potential energy. It's only going to have as much energy as we gave it when we pull it up here from the center. It works every time unless you give it a push or something. (The ball swings forward and shatters glass) Sorry.

PRESENTER 6: Energy can be changed from one form to another. (shots of a raging river and men flipping switches)

BILL NYE (flipping a fuse in a fuse box up): Electricity Is a form of energy. You're using some right now. But do you know where electricity comes from? Do you? Well, come on! A lot of it comes from the heat released by burning coal. The coal makes heat. The heat makes steam.

And the steam is running this small turbine. The turbine is actually an electrical generator. And we can read the electricity on this gauge. This is the same way it works in a real coal plant, except there's more coal, more steam, bigger generators, and more electricity. We can use the energy of falling water to make electricity. The falling water spins a giant turbine. It's like a big paddle wheel.

BILL NYE: And that runs an electric generator that makes electricity, so you can watch the show.

Nuclear power comes from atoms. Inside the atom is the nucleus, the middle. Now, some atoms have nuclei that are so big and heavy, they're always falling apart. When we bring these atoms near each other, they get hot, so hot that we can make steam, and then electrical power.

There's energy in the wind, too. Wind turns these propellers. They're windmills. The spinning blades turn electrical generators. We're converting the energy of moving air, wind, directly into electricity.

The sun is beaming energy to the Earth all day and all night. Solar panels, made of the same material as microchips, change sunlight directly into electricity. Well, now that you know where electricity comes from, you realize that you've got to conserve it. Only use it when you need it. (turns fuse in fuse box off).

(Video of a landslide, bulldozers digging in a quarry and a man using a jackhammer in the quarry)

PRESENTER 7: This came the dam, a series of great barriers that eventually will turn into--

PRESENTER 8: --a waterfall higher than Niagara, Grand Coulee Dam. Spillways begin to flow. Power to turn the wheels of--

PRESENTER 9: This is Grand Coulee Dam.

PRESENTER 8: Grand Coulee Dam.

PRESENTER 9: I'm Jane Rollins. I'm a dam operator.

PRESENTER 9: The water is behind the dam, about 100 meters above us. And that water rushes down through these water pipes, called penstocks, down to drive the turbines. We're inside the penstock. And normally, this is filled with water. This spiral case looks like a giant snail shell, and it goes around the turbine.

This is the turbine. It's a giant propeller. The rushing water up above creates thousands of tons of energy to make this turbine spin. The spinning turbine turns these generators, which produces electrical energy.

PRESENTER 10: And electrical energy may be turned into light energy, or heat energy, or even back into motion energy.

BILL NYE: This is a laser. It converts electrical energy into heat energy by making gas molecules vibrate at the same speed as heat waves. Now, this laser has only about 500 watts. That's only as much as five average, every day reading lights.

But the energy is so concentrated, it's in such a tiny space, that it's able to burn right through this plywood. Its energy is converted from one form to another and then making something happen. Isn't that cool? I mean, hot?

PRESENTER 11: Who knows what potential energy lurks in the heart of things. The transformer knows.

BILL NYE: (There is a barrel with both ends taken off. There are bungee cords holding a sandbag in the middle of the barrel.) Take a look at this energy experiment of science. Take a look. These are big, heavy, rubber bungee cords. And this is a sandbag. It's a heavyweight.

So the weight holds the center of the bungee cord still. When the barrel rolls, they twist, storing energy in the rubber. Watch. When I give it a kick, it's storing energy.

See, the weight holds the middle of the bungee cords tight, so they wind up. The energy from the kick is stored in the bungee cord. As it rolls back, we get that energy back as kinetic energy, see?

PRESENTER 12 (holding an old toy with a battery in the back): The motor which moves this toy changes the energy stored in the toy's batteries into motion energy.

PRESENTER 13: This pool (of water above a waterfall) is just energy that's stuck behind the waterfall. And then it goes down into here (a quiet stream). This is the valve that lets the water go down into the pipes. These are the pipes that water rushes down, rushes down to the powerhouse.

And it hits the turbines. This turbine changes the energy from plain old water into electricity. My dad built this power station on this stream. So we take the energy from the water and produce it into electricity.

BILL NYE: One of the big sources of energy that we use is oil. Oil is a fossil fuel. Fossil means something that we've dug up. We don't really dig it up. We pump it up.

(video of an oil rig) Now oil is pumped out of the ground. Now, this shaft goes down about 500 meters. Every time this rod goes up and down, it brings up a little bit of oil. It goes out a pipe here to a big tank. And eventually, it might wind up in your car.

Now that much steel is heavy, so we have these big counterweights that keep the thing in balance. It's called a grasshopper pump because it kind of looks like a grasshopper. Kind of. Anyway, oil is a chemical that we combine with oxygen in the air to make heat. It's a source of energy.

PRESENTER 14: The energy stored in this wood is changed into heat and light energy when the logs are burned. We store energy in ourselves by eating food.

PRESENTER 5: Energy changes form in your body all the time, as food is being broken down into fuel. Some of that energy turns into heat. Watch.

Smear a coin with some cold water. Then smear the top of a glass bottle that's already been refrigerated. Now put the coin on top of the bottle. Put your hands around it for about 30 seconds. (coin begins to jump around a little bit on the top of the bottle). Whoa, look, did you see that? See, even when we're just chilling out, our bodies are changing energy.

But where does this energy come from?

My body produced enough heat to warm the air inside the bottle and cause the coins to jump.

PRESENTER 14: We get energy from the foods we eat.

PRESENTER 5: Energy is cool.

PRESENTER 14: The energy we get from food began as light energy from the sun. (man eats a carrot)

BILL NYE (playing racket ball): Right now, I'm using a lot of energy, chemical energy I get from my food. Only about 40% of it is used to move around. 60% of it's turned to heat. That's why you get so hot when you exercise.

PRESENTER 3: Energy is everywhere.

(video collage of cars, water turbines, old woman using a weaving machine, woman diving into a lake, skateboarders, tractors, ballet dancers, volcano eruption, someone surfing, windmill, whale jumping out of the water, walking, and gymnastics)

PRESENTER 16 (antelopes running): Energy is needed to help things move and grow.

PRESENTER 2 doing a fake commercial: New from Quantum Toys.

 [SINGING] Energy transformers! Turning one kind of energy into another. Energy transformers! Now your energy pals better get some today. Energy trans--

BILL NYE riding a bike: Energy is what makes things go, run, or happen. Like energy is what makes this bike roll. Now energy can be converted from one form to another. And that's what happens when we convert chemical energy in the food we eat into the energy of movement to make the bike roll. Now whenever energy is converted from one form to another, a little bit of it ends up as heat.

PRESENTER 1: Let's take a look at heat energy and see what heat has to show us. (film of a wood fire).

 (kids skateboarding while the following rap song is being played) It's just what I feel when I eat a mega-meal. I know it's working fine when I see a neon sign. Let me jump and rant. I'm a human power plant. Moves like waves in the sea, I'm talking energy.

Stand out in the sun, there's a burning sensation, cranking energy that we call radiation. Plug in this mike, get electricity. Changes its form, but it's still energy.

Energy-- makes things go.

Energy-- makes things run.

Energy-- makes things move.

Energy-- makes things fun.

I'm starting to get hot when I dance on my feet. Energy changes form and some becomes heat. Listen to my voice, here's why you hear. Sound is energy that shakes your ear.

Kicking up energy coming from the bass drum. Moving lots of air, it's a good vibration. Sound dies out as the waves become heat, just another form of energy.

Energy-- makes things go.

Energy-- makes things run.

Energy-- makes things move.

Energy-- makes things fun.

BILL NYE standing at a bungee cord ride at an amusement park: These big black bungee cords are storing energy. When we let go, it will become kinetic energy. Whoa!

BILL NYE: Well, that's our show! I hope it was kinetic enough for you. I hope it lived up to it's-- whoa, --potential. See ya!

PRESENTER 17: Produced in association with the National Science Foundation.

BILL NYE: Microwaves make water get hot. Microwaves are energy. And as the microwaves go through water molecules, they make the water molecules rub on each other, like this. And that's how microwaves pop popcorn. The water molecules turn to steam, and they explode, making the popcorn kernels turn inside out.

Now, the molecules don't explode, just the kernels. Molecules boiling during heat. It's popping, it's popping, it's popping! The water is turning into steam. The steam's expanding, blowing the kernel--

[AUDIO OUT]

PRESENTER 5: Add a half a cup of vinegar to a half a cup of water. Then put a teaspoon of baking soda onto a coffee filter. Then roll the coffee filter up and twist the end really tight. Now put the coffee filter in the bottom of the bottle. Put the cork on as tightly as you can. And hit the dirt!

PRESENTER 1: OK, put the top on. Shake it up. It popped right off-- It popped right off-- It popped right off--