It’s the end of the work day. I hop into my car, put the key in the ignition, and make my way home. When I get there, I flip on the lights to the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. Dinner tonight is salt and pepper tofu with rice, so I plug in the air fryer and the rice cooker. I turn on my bluetooth speaker and listen to music as I wait for dinner to be ready. The appliances beep and sing to tell me that they’re done. I plate everything and plop down on the couch in front of the TV to watch the newest episode of Abbott Elementary or Bob’s Burgers.

At every step of the way, I am using electricity. What is electricity? And where does it come from? 

Earth has many cycles. Since matter cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system (this is true for the most part without getting into quantum physics!), what we have on planet Earth is what we got. So how do we take care of the resources we have? This first article in the series will talk about the carbon cycle.