I had the great opportunity this year to work with three bright young women in building their sixth grade science fair project from left to right, samantha, olivia (my lovely daughter) and meredith. The construction was fun and I think the girls learned quite a bit from the experiment.Inside an old doll house that we purchased on ebay they installed lighting and other devices that use power. They learned about different wiring systems and how much the different appliances consumed in terms of load and how they can be hooked in series versus parallel.
On the power source side they constructed three separate green power sources that could power all the circuits in the house. 1) Chemical batteries made by hand that were really cool; 2) Solar cells mounted on the roof and ; 3) Hand crank generators that they could crank manually to generate the requisite power;The girls did a full presentation to their class where they were asked a bunch of questions from their classmates. They handled the questions really well.
As I stood there in my normal role of "tech support" and "dad", I began to wonder will this be the generation that actually once and for all conquers this energy mess? I am optimistic after watching these three passionately talk in front of their peers about it. I hope for the best and would like to do more in my own life to build a green lifestyle.
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