What is Energy? Join the Flame Challenge 2017 and Explain it to 11 Year Olds!

[gleem]

In 2012 actor Alan Alda started a competition in which scientists are asked to explain by whatever means a designated phenomenon or concept to 11 year olds. The explanations are judged by students whose schools are participating in the competition worldwide some 26,000 students so far. This challenge was first introduced to PF in 2012 but has not been followed since.

The challenges so far have been What is:

A Flame, 2012
Time, 2013
Color, 2014
Sleep, 2015
Sound,2016

This year the challenge is Da Da "What is Energy?"

Apparently Mr. Alda remembering an unsatisfactory explanation to his question as an eleven year old student, What is a flame? spurred him to initiate this program. His interest in science and its impact on our lives is exemplified in his Center for Communicating Science

In a interview in Australia during its National Science Week he talked about his interest in science and the necessity of explaining it effectively to the general public.



I'm sure that there is sufficient talent in the Physics Forum to give it a shot.

 

[DrClaude]

It will be hard to beat Feynman: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_04.html
(there is video of that somewhere)

 

[Kevin McHugh]

It will be hard to beat Feynman: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_04.html
(there is video of that somewhere)

I doubt that would appeal to an 11 y/o.

 

[OmCheeto]

It will be hard to beat Feynman: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_04.html
(there is video of that somewhere)

I like that he related it to "economics", in his one lecture:



Not sure where we came up with that idea.

I think I later decided that energy was more like "color".

KE is red
PE is blue
ME is the both of them
All together, with some others, they make a hodgepodge
And this is why I kept my day job​