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| Coal, oil, and natural gas are ____ fuels because they come from the remains of photoynthetic organisms that were buried and compressed millions of years ago. | fossil |
| What are the 3 basic types of fossil fuels? | coal, oil, natural gas |
| Fossil fuels are made of molecules called ______ because they are made of two elements, hydrogen and carbon. | hydrocarbons (Below are the 10 lightest hydrocarbons. The smallest ones are gases, like methane and propane. Butane is what you find in lighters and octane is what gasoline is mostly made of.),  |
| The burning of fossil fuels releases ______ into the atmosphere, which is the greenhouse gas most responsible for global warming. | carbon dioxide |
| The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is the ______ gas most responsible for global warming. | greenhouse |
| The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is the greenhouse gas most responsible for _______. | global warming |
| TRUE or FALSE: Fossil fuels are a renewable energy source. | FALSE (Because it takes millions of years for fossil fuels to form, they are considered to be a non-renewable energy source) |
| ____ is a relatively plentiful cheap type of fossil fuel that is burned to generate most of the electricity on this planet. | Coal |
| The fossil fuel that puts out the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy when it is burned is ______. | Coal (That is one of the two reasons it is considered to be the "dirtiest" of the fossil fuels. The other reason is that impurities in coal like sulfur and mercury are also released into the air when coal is burned. These things are hazardous to our health.) |
| When carbon dioxide is captured from smokestacks or industrial processes and pumped deep underground instead of letting it go into the atmosphere, the process is called _______. | carbon sequestration (Although this can be done, it is unlikely to actually ever be done on a large scale because it is really expensive),  |
| The oil that comes out of the ground is a mixture of many different sized hydrocarbons called _____ oil that needs to be separated into useful products at a refinery. | crude oil,  |
| Crude oil that is pumped up from underground needs to be separated into useful products at a(n) ______. | oil refinery,  |
| Crude oil is refined through a chemical separation process called ______ where chemicals are separated based on the fact that they have different boiling points. | distillation (The smaller hydrocarbons boil off first while the larger ones like motor oil have to be raised to higher temperatures before they can be boiled off. When each substance becomes a gas, they are captured and cooled back down into a liquid format for storage Distillation is the same process that seperates and concentrates alcohol to make ethanol for to mix with gasoline or to make hard liquors like whiskey. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so you can heat up the weaker alcohol mixtures when they are first fermented and capture the alcohol vapors , then cool them down to re-condense them into purified concentrated alcohol), |
| The hydrocarbon called ______ is the chief component of the fuel called ______. | octane, gasoline (the numbers at the gas stations on the pumps, like 87, 89, 91, and 93, tell you how pure the gasoline is. The higher the number, the higher the percentage of octane in the gasoline) |
| Which type of fossil fuel is used for most of the overall energy in the world? | oil (A.k.a. petroleium. Crude oil can be refined into home heating oil and gasoline. Although coal is burned to produce most of the electricity in the world, a lot of our energy needs involve the gasoline we need for transportation) |
| The smallest hydrocarbon, consisting of only 1 carbon surrounded by 4 hydrogen atoms, is called ______. | methane |
| Which fossil fuel consists mostly of methane? | Natural gas,  |
| Natural gas consists mostly of the hydrocarbon called _____. | methane, |
| A drilling method called fracking has opened up many new _________ reserves in the United States, including a significant amount in Western Pennsylvania. | natural gas,  |
| A drilling method called ______ has opened up many new natural gas reserves in the United States, including a significant amount in Western Pennsylvania | fracking, |
| The biggest environmental concern with natural gas fracking is that the toxic fracking fluids that are pumped 1000's of feet below the Earth's surface to fracture the shale formations might leak out and contaminate the ________ near the surface. | groundwater, |
| Which fossil fuel produces the LEAST amount of carbon dioxide per unit of energy when it is burned? | natural gas (This is why it is sometimes referred to as the "cleanest" of the fossil fuels. However, it still puts out a lot of carbon dioxide, and even worse, a small proportion of the natural gas leaks into the atmosphere during the drilling process, and the methane that makes up most of the natural gas is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.) |
| Which fossil fuel has recently taken over for coal as the number one source of fuel to generate electricity in the United States? | natural gas (Coal is still number one on this planet overall, but not so any longer in the United States) |
| Nuclear ______ involves the breaking down of large radiactive elements into smaller (but still radioactive) elements. | fission,  |
| Nuclear ______ involves the combining of the nuclei from two smaller elements to create a new element with a bigger nucleus. | fusion, |
| Which of the two types of nuclear reactions is used with nuclear power plants to generate electricity? | fission,  |
| Which type of nuclear reaction would be able to generate large quantities of energy without producing radioactive toxic waste products? | fusion (Notice how the product of fusion reactions is helium gas, which is safe enough to breath in and make your voice sound funny),  |
| Which type of nuclear reactions produce NO greenhouse gases when used to produce energy? | Both fission and fusion, |
| Which type of nuclear reactions produce no toxic radioactive waste when used to produce energy? | fusion (Too bad we haven't figured out how to use it yet), |
| TRUE or FALSE: Nuclear energy is a renewable energy source. | FALSE (There is only a certain amount of suitable nuclear fuel, like uranium or plutonium, that can be mined from Earth's rocks. The more we use, the less there will be, until we run out. The type of radioactive elements used in nuclear reactors will not regenerate themselves. They can only be created during supernova explosions) |
| What is the name of the element that is most often used in nuclear raactors? | Uranium-235 (The 235 is the mass number of this isotope. There are other isotopes of uranium with different mass numbers. Uranium always has 92 protons, but different isotopes of uranium have different numbers of neutrons. The mass number is the total number of protons + neutrons. Other forms of uranium include the isotopes uranium-234 and uranium-238. Each has a different half-life decay rate than uranium-235 and neither is suitable as nuclear fuel) |
| Most electric power plants use the heat from either burning fossil fuels or from nuclear reactions to ___________ which creates expanding gases that blow past a _________ that spins magnets around a copper wire inside a generator, forcing electrons to travel down the copper wire, generating electricitiy. | boil water, turbine,  |
| _______ metals requires much less energy than mining the metal ores and extracting the metal by crushing the oar and heating it up to melt the metal out of the ore. | Recycling |
| Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are all examples of ______ energy sources. | renewable |
| One of the big advantages of using renewable energy sources like solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal is that, unlike fossil fuels, they don't generate ________. | greenhouse gases |
| What is the name of the website that you can go to to switch to cheaper sources of electricity, including those that are renewable like solar and wind? | papowerswitch.com (Let your parents know. It only takes about 5 minutes to call and switch. If PECO currently generates their electricity, there are definitely cheaper options on this website. Most people are happy to save money on their utility bills)) |
| TRUE or FALSE: Geothermal energy can be used anywhere? | FALSE (Geothermal power plants must be located in volcanically active areas where magma is close enough to the surface of the Earth that it can be used to boil water for the electric powerplant),  |
| TRUE or FALSE: Geothermal heating and cooling can be used anywhere? | TRUE (Geothermal heating and cooling makes use of the fact that the temperature below ground is usually 55 degrees Fahrenheit no matter what the season. Air or liquids can be piped down underground where they cool down in the summer or warm up in the winter, saving your heating or cooling system from having to change the temperature as much),  |
| ______ are rocks with a high concentration of valuable metals and/or non-metals that can be separated from the rock profitably. | Ores |
| Ores are rocks that are mined, then crushed, then heated up in a(n) ______ in order to melt the metals and separate them from the rest of the rock. | smelter,  |
