Thematic Area: Culture, Society, Education and information

Oral presentation

Abstract

Today the importance of the renewable energies (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.) for the sustainable economic development of any country, Mozambique included, is without doubt, but the knowledge that the general public has on the subject is insignificant. Among different ways of spreading this knowledge is the way via school. According to the school curriculum, a discipline closest to the issue is physics, which contains chapters dedicated to energies (Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Electrodynamics, and Quantum Physics). Therefore, precisely at physics classes, the question of the renewable energies can and must be raised, preferably through experimentation. On the other hand, physics is a natural science and it is all about experimentation. That’s why the experimentation at physics classes is a priori mandatory. However, under the conditions of lack of laboratories and conventional material in the country, this fundamental rule is violated. The situation can be partially amended by creating and performing some simple (hands-on) experiments from readily available local material, including experiments on renewable energies. Thus, at the same time, the experimentation is encouraged and the ideas about renewable energies are promoted. The presentation contains a brief description of one of the proposed experiments, which involves the solar energy and its transformation into heat. The purpose of this experiment is to evaluate the heat capacity (specific heat) of a fluid under study. To perform the experiment the necessary stuff can be sourced locally. First, the experiment is carried out with water as the reference substance. Then, the experiment is carried out once again already with the fluid in question under the same conditions and the heat capacity of this fluid is calculated. By carrying out all the steps of this experimentation, the students acquire information about solar energy as an example of renewable energies.

Key words: Physics, renewable energies, local material, heat capacity, fluid.