Energy Theater

Energy Theater is a dynamic, full-body activity that engages all students in representing the flow of energy in various phenomena, such as a light bulb burning steadily or a refrigerator cooling food.^1,2 In Energy Theater, each participant acts as a unit of energy that has one form at a time. Regions on the floor correspond to objects in a physical scenario, and participants move from one region to another to demonstrate the flow of energy among objects. (See Figs. 1, 3, and 4.) The goal of Energy Theater is for students to track energy transfers and transformations in real-world energy scenarios while employing the principle of energy conservation and disambiguating matter and energy. Unlike most representations of energy, which are static before-and-after accounting schemes for energy changes, Energy Theater is a dynamic representation that provides a natural stepping stone toward the more advanced ideas of energy density, energy current, and a continuity equation relating them. The fact that conservation of energy is embedded in the representation encourages students to “find the energy” in situations where it may be imperceptible. The rules of Energy Theater are listed in Fig. 2.