Sustainable dancefloors: Fun STEM activity

Learn about dance floors that generate electricity and consider how output is linked to activity

The engineers behind the Watt Nightclub in Rotterdam turn the energy created by clubbers on the dance-floor into power for the lighting. There’s even a giant battery to monitor the energy and encourage the crowd to dance even more. Doing your bit for the environment doesn’t have to be boring!

This engaging STEM activity is perfect for KS3 students and gives them the opportunity to develop their understanding of graphs in an engineering context. Students will learn about dance floors that generate electricity and consider how output is linked to activity. There are a number of slides within the presentation that show different graphs and students are invited to develop their own descriptions to explain their shape.

Discuss as a class what the amount of electricity is dependent upon (for example, the number of dancers, how energetically they dance). Also discuss how these variables can change, e.g., they can increase steadily, decrease steadily, or vary over time.

Some students may raise the issue of the type of music being played. Popular, lively tracks are likely to get everyone on the floor, all dancing energetically, whereas a slower and/or less popular track immediately following will reduce the energy output (as people dance less energetically and/or a number of people go to get a drink, etc.).

Suggested learning outcomes

By the end of this free resource students will have an understanding of linear functions in practical problems and they will be able to construct linear functions from real-life problems and plot their corresponding graphs. They will also be able to discuss and interpret graphs modelling real-life situations.

All activity sheets and supporting resources are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students’ and your schools’ needs.

Download the activity sheets for free!

All activity sheets and supporting resources are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students’ and your schools’ needs.

The activity sheet includes teacher notes, guidance, useful web links, and links (where appropriate) to the national curriculum in each of the four devolved UK nations; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

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