Educator's Tools: Alternative Fuels Education
Alternative Fuels Tools for Educators

The desire for a car meets $3.00 + a gallon fuel prices, the push-and-pull between the freedom that cars give us and the environmental toll, the dream of the American road versus the lives lost to Operation Iraqi Freedom— today’s students already know a lot about petroleum. Teaching about oil and the price we pay for it has a lot of benefits for the classroom. Most students have passionate opinions, and the study of transportation fuels meets many of Ohio’s Academic Content Standards. Unfortunately, news on alternative fuels is moving so quickly today that it’s difficult for an educator to keep up.

Clean Fuels Ohio hopes that this website will help you teach your students about alternative fuels. We are a non-partisan nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing air pollution through lessening our Nation’s use of petroleum. We do not play favorites with alternative fuels—all alternatives to petroleum have their pros and cons. We invite you and your students to study them and decide for yourselves.

How to use this site

This site is designed to be used either with or without the Alternative Energy curriculum created by the Railroad Commission of Texas. To date, over 150 Ohio teachers have joined Clean Fuels Ohio for a day-long workshop introducing them to alternative fuels and the Alternative Energy Curriculum. For those that attended the workshops, this site will complement your efforts. For those that do not have the curriculum, this site is customizable for your students.

Students will be presented with mini lessons on:

1) Petroleum

2) Alternative Fuels

i) Biodiesel
ii) Natural gas
iii) Ethanol
iv) Hydrogen
v) Propane

3) Fuel Efficiency

i) Hybrids
ii) Anti-Idling

After each mini lesson, they will be presented with a quiz that YOU design. The computer will score the quiz for you. For extra security, each student’s quiz will have the answers presented in random order, so a student cannot copy down the answers to give to someone else.