Math of Energy Lab
A project-based simulation sequence grounding energy concepts in physical experience — and in history. Each unit builds on the one before it.
Unit 1
Walk a Mile in Your Own Shoes
Establish your personal energy baseline. Measure what your body produces in an hour, per mile, and at rest — then convert it into watts, watt-hours, and kilowatts. By the end of this unit you have a number: your personal energy rate.
The Hour
Spend one hour doing whatever you want — walk, run, sit, skate. Log your activities and calorie burn, then convert your body's output into watts and discover what a kilowatt-hour actually feels like.
The Walk
Walk exactly one mile. Measure your calorie burn, convert it to watt-hours, and compute your power output. Compare a fixed distance to the fixed time you already lived in Sim 1.
Love Island
Use your per-mile energy cost from The Walk to answer a Fermi question: how many miles would you need to walk to power one month of watching Love Island?
Unit 2
A Day's Work
What does your body cost to run for a full working day? Learn to measure sustained labor energy across different types of physical work — field, construction, domestic — and compare your personal rate to what historical records tell us a working body was forced to produce.
Yesterday
Reconstruct yesterday — every hour accounted for. Log what you did across four 6-hour chunks, see the kcal and watt-hours each activity cost, and build your personal 24-hour energy portrait.
A Day in the Life
Answer seven questions about yourself. Receive an assignment. See the full 24-hour day you would have been given — every task, every calorie, every watt-hour — in the plantation economy of the American South, 1619–1865.
Unit 3
The Unmetered Lab
Your research group investigates one piece of the question the Unmetered map is built on. Population counts, energy rates, resistance, mortality — five groups, five research questions. When you're done, your numbers replace the placeholders. The map updates. The dots are yours.
Start here — all students
The Briefing
What is Fermi estimation? What is the Unmetered map? What does your group do? Every student starts here before splitting into research groups.
Research group labs — assigned by your teacher
LAB 01
Population Historians
How many enslaved people lived in each state, each decade, from 1619 to 1865? You are the denominator for every other group's math.
LAB 02
Labor Physicists
How much energy did an enslaved person expend in a typical day of labor, by role, crop system, and region? You already know the formula — now you apply it at scale.
LAB 03
Resistance & Conflict
How much energy went into fighting back — escape attempts, rebellions, slowdowns, USCT military service? This is the hardest category to estimate, and that difficulty is part of the lesson.
LAB 04
Mortality Scholars
How many years of life were stolen by premature death — and what is the energy equivalent? Foreclosed energy is potential, destroyed. This category cannot be added to the others.
LAB 05
Synthesizers
You receive the work of all four groups and turn it into state-level JSON records the map can use. You write the methodology notes. You ship the final dataset.
Shared wrap-up phases — all students
LAB 06
Cross-Check
Every group reviews a different group's math. Are the sources real? Does the Fermi chain compute? Does the number pass the smell test? Each group writes a one-page Cross-Check Report.
LAB 07
The Presentation
Five groups. Five presentations. Group 5 loads the final data. The map refreshes live in the room. The dots on the map are now yours.
The Math of Energy Lab is part of the Unmetered curriculum, developed by Dr. Clifford Freeman for The Young People's Project.