Year 10 Science · Unit 4 · Lesson 6
Foundation Worksheet
Learning Goals
Fill the gap
Choose the correct word from the word bank to complete each sentence. Use each word once. Two words will not be used.
1. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for example by switching from coal to renewables, is called .
2. Building a sea wall or developing drought-resistant crops to cope with changes that are already locked in is called .
3. Australia is the world leader per capita in rooftop PV, which converts sunlight directly into electricity.
4. energy uses uranium, a finite mined resource, so it is described as low-carbon but not renewable.
5. The variable output of solar and wind, which do not generate continuously, is called .
6. stores energy by pumping water uphill when power is cheap and releasing it through turbines when power is needed; it is the largest form of grid-scale storage globally.
7. Carbon stored in coastal ecosystems such as seagrass meadows and mangroves is known as .
Sort it!
Write each item from the pool into the correct column of the table below. Every item belongs in exactly one column. Two of them are storage technologies: put those in the Energy storage column, even though storage also supports mitigation.
Mitigation
Adaptation
Energy storage
1. In your own words, what is the difference between mitigation and adaptation? Give one example of each.
2. Name three renewable energy technologies. For one of them, state its main limitation.
3. Why is nuclear energy described as "low-carbon" but not "renewable"?
Wrap Up
In one sentence, what was the main idea of this lesson?
Teacher use, Fill the gap
1. mitigation 2. adaptation 3. solar 4. nuclear 5. intermittency 6. pumped hydro 7. blue carbon. (Unused words: wind, geothermal.)
Teacher use, Sort it
Mitigation: Switching power stations from coal to wind farms; Planting and protecting mangrove forests; Installing rooftop solar panels on homes.
Adaptation: Raising road levels to cope with worse flooding; Breeding drought-resistant wheat varieties; Building sea walls to protect a coastal town.
Energy storage: Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme; Hornsdale Power Reserve lithium-ion battery.
Teacher use, Show What You Know
1. Mitigation reduces the causes of climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions or enhancing carbon sinks (e.g. switching to renewables). Adaptation adjusts to changes already locked in to reduce harm (e.g. building a sea wall). Accept any valid example of each.
2. Any three of: solar PV, wind, hydroelectricity, geothermal. Limitations (one needed): solar and wind are intermittent (no output at night / variable with wind); hydro needs suitable terrain and water and is hit by drought; geothermal has high drilling costs.
3. Nuclear has near-zero operational emissions, so it is low-carbon, but it runs on uranium, a finite mined resource that is not naturally replenished on human timescales, so it is not renewable.
Teacher use, notes from review
The Sort it! tie-break. Mitigation and Adaptation classify a climate response by what it does; Energy storage names a kind of technology. Those are not one axis, so Snowy 2.0 and Hornsdale had two defensible homes — a student who filed either under Mitigation would have been marked wrong for a correct answer, since the lesson presents storage inside its mitigation material as the solution to intermittency. The instruction now states the tie-break, so each of the eight items has exactly one column. Split: 3 / 3 / 2. If a student argues that storage is mitigation, they are right and should be told so — the column exists to separate generation from storage, not to deny the connection.