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How a Geothermal Power Plant Works

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Description

This simplified animation of a geothermal power plant from the U.S. Department of Energy illustrates commonalities with traditional power-generating stations. While there are many types of geothermal power plants, this animation shows a generic plant.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

  • Although energy cannot be destroyed, it can be converted to less useful forms—for example, to thermal energy in the surrounding environment.
  • Energy is spontaneously transferred out of hotter regions or objects and into colder ones.
  • Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transported from one place to another and transferred between systems.
  • The availability of energy limits what can occur in any system.

Crosscutting Concepts

  • Changes of energy and matter in a system can be described in terms of energy and matter flows into, out of, and within that system.
  • Energy cannot be created or destroyed—it only moves between one place and another place, between objects and/or fields, or between systems.
  • The transfer of energy can be tracked as energy flows through a designed or natural system.
  • Energy may take different forms (e.g. energy in fields, thermal energy, energy of motion).
  • Within a natural or designed system, the transfer of energy drives the motion and/or cycling of matter.

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