April 10

Energy Pyramids: How Energy Moves Through Ecosystems 🔺⚡

📅 Completed in Class: April 10
📌 Any unfinished work was assigned as homework.

In this lesson, students explored how energy flows through a food chain using the model of an energy pyramid. They learned that the sun is the ultimate source of energy and that energy is lost at each level of the pyramid as it moves from producers to consumers.

🧬 What We Covered:

🔹 The Energy Pyramid Structure

• Producers (like plants) get energy from the sun through photosynthesis.

• Primary consumers eat producers but only receive 10% of the energy.

• Secondary consumers get 10% of the energy from primary consumers.

• Tertiary consumers get 10% of the energy from secondary consumers.

• The rest of the energy is used or lost as heat at each level.
  
  

🔢 Energy Calculations (Practice Example):

• Students calculated energy transfer in a sample chain starting with 1000 units from the sun:

  • Producers stored 100 units

  • Primary consumers received 10 units

  • Secondary consumers received 1 unit

  • Tertiary consumers received 0.1 unit

• Students also used a custom food chain (e.g., algae → tadpole → minnow → blue heron → alligator) and calculated the energy at each level.

🎨 Hands-On and Math Practice:

• Students drew their own food chain, labeled each level, and identified if each organism was a producer, herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore.

• They calculated how much energy was transferred between each level and discussed which organisms require the most energy to support.
  
  

🌍 Why This Matters:

This activity helped students visualize how energy becomes more limited as you move up a food chain. It emphasizes why ecosystems rely on a large base of producers to support fewer top-level consumers, and how energy efficiency impacts biodiversity and survival.

✅ Nice work building and calculating your energy pyramids! Don’t forget to turn in your homework if you didn’t finish the activity in class. 📈🌞🌿