ACF Lesson Plan: How Much Does it Cost to Light the School?
Eleven miners trapped underground in China’s Yunnan Province have been rescued, while another six workers have been saved from a flooded coal mine in Heilongjiang Province.
The fall of one of two coal stackers, currently in the final stages of assembly at the port of Nacala-a-Velha, in northern Mozambique, which took place last week, is the subject of an investigation, Brazilian group Vale said.
Overview:
Students compute the cost of electricity used to light their classroom and their school for various lengths of time. They then compute the amount of coal needed to produce the electricity used for one hour of light in their classroom.
The Yunnan Province accident happened after the mine in Lianghe County caved in around 1pm on Saturday, trapping 11 workers inside.
The group also said in a statement that the incident, which caused no personal injuries, was being examined by the company responsible for supplying and assembling the equipment, which has sent a team to the site to ascertain the causes of the incident.
Special Note to Teachers: This activity would be a good piggyback lesson to Conserving Electric Energy.
Authorities rescued all workers after 40 hours of operation by digging a tunnel to reach the trapped miners, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
Sources cited by the Reuters news agency said this incident was yet another problem for the operations of subsidiary Vale Moçambique, which still lacks the necessary infrastructure for transportation of coal that it mines in Moatize, Tete province
Objectives:
Students will:
- calculate the cost of providing electricity to light their classroom and school,
- compute the amount of coal needed for one hour of light in their classroom, and
- gain an appreciation for how much coal is needed to generate electricity.
According to the local authorities, the collapsed happened due to mudflow caused by heavy rain in the region.
So far Vale has been exporting coal by rail along the Sena line, which has a limited capacity and therefore has been investing around US$4 billion in the construction of an alternative line from Moatize to Nacala through Malawi.
National Standards:
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Standards
- Numbers and Operations, 3-5, 6-8
- Problem Solving, 3-5, 6-8
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Standards
- Production, Distribution, and Consumption
- Science, Technology, and Society
Time Needed:
One class period
After part of the mine caved in, the local authorities deployed about 1000 rescuers in the operation to save the trapper miners.
The railway, which is 900 kilometres long, and the port of Nacala-a-Velha are part of the so-called Nacala Corridor, a consortium between state rail and port company CFM and Vale, which sold a 35 percent share of the Corridor and 15 percent of the coal mine to Japan’s Mitsui. (macauhub/BR/MZ)
Materials:
- Paper and pencil
- Calculator
- Classroom and school lit by fluorescent bulbs
In another incident, a coal mine at Hegang in the Heilongjiang province of north-east China flooded last Monday, trapping 16 workers.
The coal stacker is a large piece of equipment that is used to move coal and other dry bulk cargo.
Discussion Questions:
- How is your classroom lit?
- Where does the electricity come from to power the lightbulbs in your classroom?
- How much do you think it costs to light your classroom for one hour?
The rescuers have managed to save six people, while four others have died.
Metro Manila — The death of at least six coal miners, who were buried by a landslide in Antique on Friday (July 17), again underscored the risks that large-scale mining poses to both human lives and the environment, research group IBON Foundation said in a statement posted on its website on Sunday (July 19).
Procedure:
- Begin by explaining to students that coal is used to produce more than half of the electricity consumed in the United States. Tell the students that they will use their computation skills to gain an appreciation for how much it costs, and how much coal is used, to light their classroom and school.
Special Note to Teachers: To promote problem-solving, you may wish to create student groups with multi-level math abilities so that they work together to come up with the answers.
Xinhua reported: “Rescuers are racing to search for the other five workers who have been trapped in the pit for about seven days.”
“This should compel government to repeal Republic Act 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act of 1995,” IBON said. “The law has allowed the operation of big local and foreign corporations in large-scale mining nationwide, undermining farming and indigenous communities and compromising the Philippine environment
Tell the students that the electricity needed for the fluorescent tubes used to light most classrooms costs approximately three-tenths of a cent per hour. Write this fact on the blackboard for use in calculating. (The actual costs range from two-tenths of a cent to four and one-half cents per hour, depending on the locale.) Ask the students if they can figure out how to calculate how much it would cost to light their entire classroom for one hour. Explain that they can count the number of fluorescent tubes in the classroom (N) and multiply that number by .003 (or three-tenths of a cent). The answer is the total dollar cost (C) of lighting the classroom for one hour.
N X .003 = C
The accident happened at Xuxiang Colliery, which is owned by a private company and has a capacity to produce 150,000t per year.
The landslide on Friday caused the north wall of the Semirara Panian open mine pit to collapse, burying nine workers — six of them confirmed dead, while three others remained missing.
Students can then compute the daily cost (DC) of lighting the classroom by multiplying C by the number of hours per day the classroom is lit (H):
C X H = DC
Investigators with the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy responded to the scene of a mining accident in Southwest Virginia Monday afternoon.
This is the second major accident at the Panian pit. On February 14, 2013, the west wall of the same pit collapsed, killing at least five miners.
Complete other calculations for lighting the classroom for the week, month, and year. Then have the students compute how much it costs to light the entire school for the day, week, month, and year. (Students will need to find out how many fluorescent tubes are in the school. They can estimate this by multiplying the number in their own classroom by the number of classrooms in the school.)
“Management has condoled with the families of the victims and is giving them full support.
The department said the accident happened around 10:30 a.m. Monday at Paramount Coal Company’s Deep Mine 26 in Dickenson County, Va.
Explain to students that it takes approximately 1 ton of coal to produce 2,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity (or 1 pound of coal to produce 1.25 kilowatt-hours). Write this fact on the blackboard or display it on the overhead projector. Explain that a kilowatt-hour is the unit of electric power used by 1,000 watts of energy for one hour. Tell them that the average fluorescent tube uses 18 watts per hour or .018 kilowatt-hours of power per bulb. Ask them if they can determine how to calculate the amount of coal needed to light their classroom. Remind them that 1 ton of coal can produce 2,500 kilowatt-hours of electricity, and that 1 pound of coal can produce 1.25 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Ask them to figure out how much coal (n) it takes to produce only .018 kilowatt-hour.
1 ton : 2,500 kWh = n ton : .018 kWh
(or 1 ton is to 2,500 kWh as “n” tons is to .018 kWh)
OR
1 lb. : 1.25 kWh = n lb. : .018 kWh
(or 1 pound is to 1.25 kWh as “n” pounds is to .018 kWh)
n = .0000072 ton or .014 lb.
This is the amount of coal needed to light one fluorescent tube for one hour. Students can now multiply this number by the number of tubes in the classroom (or school) to figure out how many tons of coal are needed to light the classroom (or school) for one hour.
“It is also coordinating with national and local authorities to keep them updated on the search and rescue efforts and other necessary measures including ensuring the adequate supply of coal for power generation since it has stopped operations in the affected area in compliance with an order from the Department of Energy.
A spokesperson for the department said a man’s arm was caught and twisted around a steel drill while he was installing a roof bolt.
Conduct a class discussion about the calculations. Were the students surprised by how much it costs to light their classroom or school? Were their findings more or less than they thought they would be? Did they have any idea how much coal was needed to provide electricity for fluorescent tubes? Tell them that regular lightbulbs use significantly more electricity (on average .075 kWh/bulb). Even though fluorescent tubes cost more to purchase, they are more economical in the long run, because the electricity needed to light them costs so much less. Encourage students to think about how much coal might be needed to provide light for their whole town.
“The company is investigating the cause of the accident in coordination with authorities.”
Emergency teams took the man, 44, of Big Stone Gap, Va., to a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky for treatment.
Assessment:
Have the students work in small groups to document their findings. Then have them prepare a letter to the principal. The letter should include their assessment of the costs and the amount of coal needed to light the school, as well as their recommendations for ways the school might lower its lighting costs.
‘Full responsibility’
A day after, Senators Francis Escudero and Loren Legarda issued statements calling for a thorough probe of the incident and urging the government and mining companies to work together to put in place tougher measures to ensure the safety of miners.
The man had previously worked for Bates Contracting and had been working at the mine since February.
Extension:
Encourage students to look at their family’s electric bill. Have them take note of the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour and compare that to the $.003 used in these calculations. Do they know whether the electricity they use at home is generated by coal? What other source might it come from? Where is the power plant that generates their local electricity?
Both lawmakers issued similar statements shortly after the 2013 incident.
“Safety in coal mining is always an issue,” Legarda said in a statement posted on her website on Sunday. There are environmental impacts as well as health and safety implications to the workers.”
Now, have students calculate the cost of a human life and figure that into the fancy equations and the broken political promises.