Alternative & Renewable Energy Posters
for science & social studies classrooms, home schoolers, offices.

Solar energy - the radiant light and heat from the sun can be passively and actively harnessed.

Solar energy collectors, SEGS Plant, Mojave, CA, Photographic Print

The Mohave Desert of California is the site of Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS), the largest solar energy generating facility in the world.

• Elenco Solar Deluxe Educational Kit

Wind Energy

Wind is the natural movement of air caused by the Earth’s surface being unevenly heated by the sun.

Sails have long been used to catch the wind to propel ships, and wind mills for pumping water from wells. Converting the power of wind into electricity is an absolute must as the fossil fuels that have sequestered billions of years of solar energy are being depleted.

View of windmills on a wind energy farm, Photographic Print

Wind energy has become the world's fastest growing energy source as environmental concerns have focused attention on the generation of electricity from clean and renewable sources.

• Wind Energy Basics: A Guide to Small and Micro Wind Systems

A few Wind Energy Facts
• The first recorded wind mills come from China, about 200 BC.
• Some of the first documented uses for wind energy sailed boats along the Nile River around 5,000 BC.
• Other early documented windmills were also designed for grain grinding before 900 AD in Persia. The vertical-axis windmills had a central shaft with vertical sails made of wood and reeds.
• Around 1888 Charles F. Brush was the first inventor to build a large-scale windpower turbine for electricity generation, Brush's turbine, in Cleveland, Ohio, weighed 40 tons, stood 60 ft. tall with a 56 ft. diameter and multi-bladed rotor, was able to power his mansion with 12kW that charged 12 batteries. The windmill was also the first to incorporate a step-up gearbox.
• In 1931, Russia started developing a utility-scale 100-kW windpower generator. They say it produced about 200,000 kWh near the shore of the Caspian Sea.
• Windpower grew in popularity with the unstable fossil fuels market in the 1970s. This sparked a global interest in wind turbines for power generation.
• The Baltic Sea marks the location of the first commercial offshore wind farm. Installed in 1991 about 2 km off the coastline of Vindeby, Denmark, the 11-turbine wind farm has been in operation for more than 20 years setting the expectations for many offshore projects.
• The latest generation of giant turbines imitates modern small (micro) wind turbines for powering boats, homes, cabins, and cottages, by eliminating the gearbox in favor of direct-drive permanent-magnet alternators utilizing neodymium-based SuperMagnets. The result is a drivetrain that has only a single moving part, and less wear, requiring less service over an extended life.

Energy Cheap Chart Six Pack

Posters on wind energy, biomass energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, hydropower energy and ocean energy. Activities on the back enhance learning.

Motion & Energy Poster and Activity Set

Posters on potential energy, kinetic energy, conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, speed, acceleration.

Physical Science Basics

Posters on light, waves, energy, simple machines.

• Isaac Newton

Carson Dellosa Alternatve Energy Chart Set

Charts on biomas, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, ocean/wave, wind.

Nuclear Energy

Friedensreich Hundertwasser ~
• “We produce in a panic, consume like crazy, waste blindly, and man is degraded to a consumption machine. Nuclear energy is probably meant to reinforce this most dangerous of all enslavements.”
• “Whoever propagates nuclear energy is either extremely short-sighted, tendentiously informed, or consciously criminal. It is the government’s responsibility to inform the population about the dangers of nuclear energy.”
• “Nuclear energy is not only an ecological, but also a gigantic economic catastrophe.”
• “Nuclear energy, too, this final aberration in the history of mankind, was only possible because the focus is only on the seemingly rational. Moral-aesthetic values are missing, and the link between man and creation, which is represented by art. Without art, without the creative, there is nothing.”
• “Atomic power will make electricity too cheap to meter.” ~ Glenn T. Seaborg
• “The release of atomic energy constitutes a new force too revolutionary to consider in the framework of old ideas.” ~ Harry S Truman

Hydropower - Flowing Water

The energy of falling water has been harnessed since ancient times for processes such as grinding grain into flour or sawing trees into lumber. There is evidence of waterwheels from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, and Greece.