Two kids have two plans: one wants to use less, one wants machines that need less. Write how they explain the difference.Fact: energy efficiency is using technology that needs less energy to do the same job.
Spend a day as a light switch that is tired of being left on.Angle: what does it see in the empty room?
Explain to a visitor from long ago where the energy in a banana ends up.Fact: food is the body's fuel; it gives a person energy to move, breathe and think.
A cow learns that her farm makes cooking gas from manure. Write her diary entry.Fact: animal manure can be used to produce biogas, a renewable gas.
A farm windmill has pumped water for the cattle since before anyone can remember. Write one windless week.Fact: water-pumping windmills still work on some farms and ranches, mainly to water livestock.
A water wheel has ground grain for one village for longer than anyone remembers. Write its retirement speech.Fact: thousands of years ago, people used hydropower to turn paddle wheels that ground grain.
Cook lunch in a solar oven on an afternoon when the clouds keep coming and going. Write the wait.Fact: a solar oven is a box for collecting and absorbing sunlight.
Draw up the family tree of energy sources in words: who is renewable, who is not, and who argues at dinner.Fact: coal, natural gas and crude oil are fossil fuels; wind, solar and hydropower are renewable.
Explain to a visitor from long ago where the energy in a banana ends up.Fact: food is the body's fuel; it gives a person energy to move, breathe and think.
Follow one raindrop from a cloud to a dam and write its day at work.Fact: at a hydropower plant, water flows through a pipe and turns the blades of a turbine.
Let the wind tell where it got its push.Fact: wind is caused by uneven heating of the Earth's surface by the Sun.
Ride an elevator, in a story, down to where the Earth keeps its own heat. Write what the operator tells you.Fact: geothermal energy is heat inside the Earth; the name comes from Greek words for earth and heat.
Set a story in a town that heats its houses with hot water from under the ground.Fact: a district heating system provides heat for most of the buildings in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The Sun sends Earth a bill for all the energy so far. Write the bill and Earth's reply.Fact: the Sun has been producing energy for billions of years.
Trace your breakfast back to the Sun, step by step, and write each step.Fact: the Sun is the original source for nearly all the energy we use.
Write a geyser's opinion of the people who come to watch it.Fact: geysers are rare hot springs that send eruptions of hot water and steam into the air.
Write a week of chores in a home where every bit of heat comes from the woodpile.Fact: until the mid-1800s, wood supplied nearly all the nation's heating, cooking and lighting.
Write the complaint of a solar calculator that has been left in a drawer.Fact: small solar cells can power calculators, watches and other small electronic devices.
A day of saving it 15
An aluminum can goes into the recycling bin. Write its trip back to the store shelf as something new.Fact: recycling often saves energy and natural resources.
An old light bulb is replaced by an LED. Write the speech it gives on the way out.Fact: old incandescent bulbs turn only about 10% of their electricity into light; the rest is heat.
Ask the mayor, in a letter, for one change that would save energy in your town.Angle: one change, one reason, one thing you will do yourself.
Be the energy detective of your home for one day. Write your case notes.Fact: more than half of a home's energy use goes to heating and air conditioning.
Design a label for machines that sip energy where others gulp it, and write the story of the first machine to earn one.Fact: a label on appliances and electronic equipment identifies energy-efficient products.
Make a list poem of ten things that are switched on right now with nobody using them.Angle: end on the one you got up and turned off.
On a winter night a house can feel where its warmth is slipping out. Write what it says.Angle: a gap under the door, a window open a crack, a hatch to the attic.
One kid turns every light off and one never does. Write their argument.Fact: turning the lights off when leaving the room is a way of conserving energy.
Pick the machine in your home that works hardest and never gets thanked. Write its thank-you card.Fact: water heating, lighting and refrigeration are home energy uses that run all year.
Spend a day as a light switch that is tired of being left on.Angle: what does it see in the empty room?
Two kids have two plans: one wants to use less, one wants machines that need less. Write how they explain the difference.Fact: energy efficiency is using technology that needs less energy to do the same job.
Two streets compete to see which can use less energy in a week. Write how it ends.Angle: who cheats a little, and who surprises everyone?
Walk or bike somewhere you usually ride to, and write what you never see from a car.Fact: gasoline and diesel make up most of the energy used for transportation.
Write a commercial for a sweater, sold as the oldest heating system there is.Angle: one slogan, one happy customer, one thing it cannot do.
Your class tries to use as little energy as it can for one school day. Write the rules and how the day goes.Fact: energy conservation is any behavior that results in the use of less energy.
Energy changes form 15
A ball stops bouncing. Write the detective's report on where its energy went.Fact: when people use energy it does not disappear; it changes from one form into another.
A car engine explains its job to a bicycle. Write what the bicycle says back.Fact: a car engine burns gasoline, converting its chemical energy into mechanical energy.
A drum is hit once. Write where the energy goes next.Fact: sound is produced when a force makes an object vibrate, and the energy travels in a wave.
Describe a campfire as energy changing its clothes.Fact: burning wood in a fireplace converts chemical energy to thermal energy.
Follow the energy in a slice of toast until it is you, running for the bus.Fact: the law of conservation of energy says energy is neither created nor destroyed.
The human body has been called a poor machine. Write its defense.Fact: the body is less than 5% efficient most of the time; the remaining energy becomes heat.
Keep a battery's diary from full to empty.Fact: a battery is an example of chemical energy, stored in the bonds of atoms and molecules.
List every energy change you can spot between waking up and leaving for school, then write the morning.Angle: the alarm, the toaster, the shower, your own legs.
Potential energy is always waiting and kinetic energy cannot sit still. Write their conversation.Fact: potential energy is stored energy; kinetic energy is energy in movement.
Ride a roller coaster from the top of the first hill, and name the moment the stored energy lets go.Fact: the higher and heavier the object, the more gravitational energy is stored.
The same sunlight lands on a leaf, a roof and a puddle. Write what each one makes of it.Fact: sunshine is radiant energy, the fuel and warmth that make life on Earth possible.
Sunlight hands off to a green leaf, the leaf to a muscle, the muscle to a moving bike. Write the handoffs.Angle: what is passed along each time, and what is lost on the way?
Tell a bike ride down a steep hill the way the energy would tell it.Fact: riding down a steep hill, gravitational energy is converting to motion energy.
Write a stretched rubber band's thoughts in the second before it is let go.Fact: stretched rubber bands and compressed springs are examples of stored mechanical energy.
You rub your hands together on a cold morning. Write it as the report of a very small power station.Angle: what goes in, what comes out, and who gets the heat?
My own power plant 15
A cloudy week arrives at your solar plant. Write how you get through it.Fact: the amount of available sunlight depends on time of day, location, season and weather.
A neighbor does not want your wind turbine on the hill. Write the conversation that changes one of your minds.Fact: large wind turbines stand on towers from about 500 feet to as high as 900 feet tall.
A plant operator tells a bedtime story about the night the whole town slept and the plant did not. Write it.Angle: what did the operator hear at three in the morning?
Choose wind, water, sun or the Earth's heat for your plant, and write why the other three lost.Fact: hydropower, geothermal, wind and solar are all renewable energy sources.
Design a power plant for your town and write the opening-day speech.Angle: say what it runs on, where it stands and what it will never do.
Fifty years on, you send the town a letter about what you would build differently. Write it.Angle: one thing you got right, one you got wrong, one nobody could have known.
Imagine a tiny power plant for a treehouse and write its owner's manual.Angle: what does it power: one light, one fan, one radio?
Invent a power plant that runs on something silly, and write the inspector's report.Angle: playground swings, barking dogs, kids who cannot sit still.
Keep the diary of a turbine blade on its first windy day.Fact: wind flowing over the blades creates lift, as on an airplane wing, and that turns them.
Paint the sign at the gate of your power plant: its name, its rules and one joke. Write all three.Angle: the joke is the part visitors remember.
Post a job ad for the first worker at your plant.Angle: what will they do all day, and what must they never forget?
You are in charge of finding the windiest spot to build on. Write the search.Fact: good sites for wind turbines include tops of smooth, rounded hills, open plains and mountain gaps.
Your plant is a dam. Write what you tell the river.Fact: the greater the water flow and the higher the fall, the more electricity a hydropower plant makes.
Your plant saves energy for later by pumping water uphill at night. Write the night shift.Fact: pumped-storage plants pump water up to a higher reservoir and release it later through turbines.
Your plant taps the heat under the ground. Write the day the drill reaches hot rock.Fact: the deeper you go underground, the hotter the rocks and water.
How it works
These energy writing prompts follow energy the way a science unit does: its sources, its forms and the changes between them. Many carry a fact from Energy Kids, the children's pages of the US Energy Information Administration.
Read the full guide
A writing prompt about energy changing form
Energy is never used up. It turns into something else. So a bike ride down a hill is told by the energy, a campfire is energy changing its clothes, and a detective reports on where the bounce went when a ball stopped. A battery keeps a diary from full to empty.
Energy story ideas: a power plant of your own
Fifteen prompts put the writer in charge. Choose wind, water, sun or the Earth's heat, search for the windiest hill, give the opening-day speech. One plant runs on something silly and gets an inspector's report. Another saves its energy by pumping water uphill at night.
Name the form of energy at the start and at the end. The story is what happens in between.
For a saving prompt, write one room. A whole house turns into a list.
Questions and answers
What is a good writing prompt about energy?
One with something to watch. Ride a roller coaster from the top of the first hill and name the moment the stored energy lets go. Or follow the energy in a slice of toast until it is you, running for the bus.
What are the forms of energy?
Energy Kids sorts them in two. Potential energy is stored: chemical, mechanical, nuclear and gravitational. Kinetic energy is motion: radiant energy such as light, thermal energy or heat, motion, sound and electrical energy.
Are there energy story ideas about saving energy?
Yes, in A day of saving it. A kid plays energy detective at home, two streets compete to use less in a week, and an old light bulb gives a speech on the day an LED replaces it.
Are energy writing prompts the same as electricity prompts?
No. Electricity is one form of energy and has a list of its own, about a day with the power out and how power reaches a house. This list takes the sources and the other forms: heat, light, motion, sound, stored energy.