Sunday, October 01, 2006
Kids' discoveries at Vancouver Museum and Telus Science World workshops parallel, or even exceed, real-world Sustainability science
EMAIL Reference, September 7, 2006 (Solar Power Road Show) - Picture this: Wacky-looking scraps of bright metallic cardboard held together by sticky tape that brought a stone to nearly 200F in two minutes, using only the sun. It doesn't look like a conventional solar oven, more like a science-fiction movie prop. Created, not by a film-studio artist, but by an 11-year old attending Vancouver Museum's workshops. Solar ovens have commercial potential, and, might even reduce forest fires, if we can convince campers to use them.
This scene was not from a Silicon Valley board room, where the Tesla electric sports car is nearing final engineering work: Six gifted young men and one young woman discuss the merits of various energy sources for a vehicle of the future. And, just like Popular Mechanics editors, they decide that the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle doesn't isn't as practical as solar-powered battery vehicle. This group's average age is probably 12 years, and this scene was actually at Pinewood Elementary School in Delta. The Tesla electric car is the first production car created by software and computer engineers, spurred on by the hit feature documentary, "Who Killed The Electric Car?". Here's another example: Wired magazine featured alight-concentrator based on supercomputer calculations programmed by math wizards. These math geniuses' parabolic dishes will allow a solar panel to exceed its usual performance. Only math post-grad students equipped with supercomputers can do this and save the planet, right? Well, here's what happened at the 30 Days of Sustainability event at Telus Science World: A young boy created a parabolic panel that allowed his model electric car to run without direct sunlight - it worked in the shade, and, at a good speed relative to other solar cars running under a full sun! We named this parabola, "Marek's Curve", in his honour. You can probably find Marek's Curve with Google.
Why are we, adults, throwing alkaline batteries away? Mountain Equipment Coop alleges that small household batteries cause 50%-70% of heavy metal contamination in
landfills. As any American familiar with the billions of dollars in the Superfund cleanup will tell you, all landfills will eventually leak. And that toxic sludge will bubble up in our children's children's drinking water, and litigation lawyers will issue class action writs, decades from now. Adults don't know this, but scores of pre-teens in Vancouver attending Solar Power Roadshow's workshops have experimented with everything from gravity to freezing temperatures to revive single-use batteries. Students who succeeded in bringing used batteries back to 1.5 volts have shared their methods to others. Vancouver now has dozens of potential recycling entrepreneurs, since a new brand-name alkaline retails for $2 each. More than one pre-teen vowed to become the 'Bill Gates' of battery-revival, as there are 12 billion alkalines disposed of annually. Why not, the raw material costs nothing, anyway.
Given what has been shown by these kids, I respectfully suggest, to other educators, to consider allowing elementary school students to investigate sustainable energy technology without showing already-existing 'adult world' models because there are useful discoveries being made by pre-teens, as we've seen in Solar Power Roadshow's free-form workshops.
Written by:
Rob Matthies
email: robert04mat @ yahoo.com
306-349 East 6th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5T 1J9
( 6 0 4 ) 7 3 9 - 7 7 1 7
Edu-fun at the Nature Matters festival
http://solarfunsurrey.blogspot.com/
Sustainability magic at Canada Day
http://sustainabilitymagic.blogspot.com/2006/07/sustainability-magic-show-for-stephen.html
EMAIL Reference, September 7, 2006 (Solar Power Road Show) - Picture this: Wacky-looking scraps of bright metallic cardboard held together by sticky tape that brought a stone to nearly 200F in two minutes, using only the sun. It doesn't look like a conventional solar oven, more like a science-fiction movie prop. Created, not by a film-studio artist, but by an 11-year old attending Vancouver Museum's workshops. Solar ovens have commercial potential, and, might even reduce forest fires, if we can convince campers to use them.
This scene was not from a Silicon Valley board room, where the Tesla electric sports car is nearing final engineering work: Six gifted young men and one young woman discuss the merits of various energy sources for a vehicle of the future. And, just like Popular Mechanics editors, they decide that the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle doesn't isn't as practical as solar-powered battery vehicle. This group's average age is probably 12 years, and this scene was actually at Pinewood Elementary School in Delta. The Tesla electric car is the first production car created by software and computer engineers, spurred on by the hit feature documentary, "Who Killed The Electric Car?". Here's another example: Wired magazine featured alight-concentrator based on supercomputer calculations programmed by math wizards. These math geniuses' parabolic dishes will allow a solar panel to exceed its usual performance. Only math post-grad students equipped with supercomputers can do this and save the planet, right? Well, here's what happened at the 30 Days of Sustainability event at Telus Science World: A young boy created a parabolic panel that allowed his model electric car to run without direct sunlight - it worked in the shade, and, at a good speed relative to other solar cars running under a full sun! We named this parabola, "Marek's Curve", in his honour. You can probably find Marek's Curve with Google.
Why are we, adults, throwing alkaline batteries away? Mountain Equipment Coop alleges that small household batteries cause 50%-70% of heavy metal contamination in
landfills. As any American familiar with the billions of dollars in the Superfund cleanup will tell you, all landfills will eventually leak. And that toxic sludge will bubble up in our children's children's drinking water, and litigation lawyers will issue class action writs, decades from now. Adults don't know this, but scores of pre-teens in Vancouver attending Solar Power Roadshow's workshops have experimented with everything from gravity to freezing temperatures to revive single-use batteries. Students who succeeded in bringing used batteries back to 1.5 volts have shared their methods to others. Vancouver now has dozens of potential recycling entrepreneurs, since a new brand-name alkaline retails for $2 each. More than one pre-teen vowed to become the 'Bill Gates' of battery-revival, as there are 12 billion alkalines disposed of annually. Why not, the raw material costs nothing, anyway.
Given what has been shown by these kids, I respectfully suggest, to other educators, to consider allowing elementary school students to investigate sustainable energy technology without showing already-existing 'adult world' models because there are useful discoveries being made by pre-teens, as we've seen in Solar Power Roadshow's free-form workshops.
Written by:
Rob Matthies
email: robert04mat @ yahoo.com
306-349 East 6th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5T 1J9
( 6 0 4 ) 7 3 9 - 7 7 1 7
Edu-fun at the Nature Matters festival
http://solarfunsurrey.blogspot.com/
Sustainability magic at Canada Day
http://sustainabilitymagic.blogspot.com/2006/07/sustainability-magic-show-for-stephen.html
