Energy and Energy Waste: a Topic for Science Education

Abstract

English Proceeding from the discrepancy between the scientific concept of energy conservation and the notion of energy consumption, it is shown that, contrary to the common presentations in textbooks, energy is a quantity which, in addition to its quantitative aspects which are governed by the first law of thermodynamics, possesses an aspect of quality which is described by the second law of thermodynamics. From this, the energy crisis may be seen in a new light: energy as such is not consumed, but its quality or value is. In other words: energy is devalued. Saving energy thus becomes a question of making energy consumption more efficient and of matching carefully the quality of the available energy forms with the quality of energy required for the job. This matching would eliminate, for example, the use of the same high‐quality energy for operating a vacuum cleaner and for heating a room. In order to arrive at a measure of efficiency which is sensitive to the different qualities of available energy forms and the desired jobs, the efficiency ? which considers only the quantities involved in energy transformations, is replaced by efficiency ?∗ which includes the constraint of minimum energy devaluation or a minimum production of entropy. This conception allows a close relationship between the scientific and the every‐day understanding of energy to be established: there is no need to discredit the firmly established notion that something is used up during energy transformations (as is commonly done in textbooks) in order to introduce the principle of energy conservation. On the contrary, this notion may be upheld and even supported in that the quantity being consumed is recognized as the value of the energy resulting in entropy increase. Thereby, the conceptual and educational difficulties which arise when pupil's views have to be changed, may be eliminated.