Cross-Campus History and Chemistry Collaboration Launches Online Energy Resource

Energy Basics (energybasics.org) is a new educational website that provides overarching and easily understandable explanations of how energy systems work. Paul Sabin, Randolph W. Townsend, Jr. Professor of History joined forces with Claire Cody, Ph.D. Candidate in Inorganic Chemistry, and Dr. Noreen Gentry (Ph.D., ‘22), Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Solar Energy Technologies Office to build this exemplarily interdisciplinary energy resource. The website covers topics from fuels to flows and from sources to storage, while weaving in elements of energy justice and climate change.

The Energy Basics website was created as a companion to Dr. Sabin’s Energy History Online teaching resource, which provides historical primary sources for use in teaching. To create Energy Basics, Cody and Gentry shared their scientific expertise to, as Cody explained, “think about how the technical science side can meet with the more historical and social aspects of energy.”

The website aims to provide students and the public with introductory insights into how energy systems work. “This site is really trying to fulfill a very specific function,” Sabin says. “How do these technologies work, and what's the basic understanding that students or the general public should have about technology and science?”

Sabin and Cody both speak highly of the opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration in making the Energy Basics website. Sabin reflects, “it was a lot of fun to get to work in truly interdisciplinary fashion, trying to figure out how to communicate scientific information in a way that would be usable in a history course.” Cody adds, “We have all these great resources and people doing amazing things at Yale, so having cross disciplinary interactions across departments has been really fulfilling.”

Explore the Energy Basics website and spread the word through your networks! You can read the full interview with Sabin and Cody here.