Hipp to be Green

Since this is the 2nd year I have been involved in a Hipp Grant project, I am more relaxed about the different aspects of the project. What I mean by this is last year my thought process was:   we were given money to work on a project, so I need to work on it all the time. I found myself forcing some concepts so they could involve the project.

This year I realized that it is an ongoing process and there will be some stretches of time that I don’t even mention the solar panels in class. The one thing I do is stay in constant touch with Wes. This way I know what he is doing in Tech, what he has covered, and when I get to certain objectives such as scaling and dilations I can reference what they have done in Tech to what they are now learning in Math.

Hopefully anyone thinking about applying for a grant will realize that it can be incorporated into their class work and not be an “extra” project that you have to do in addition to your regular class work. It also helps if you have a colleague like Wes who takes care of all the paperwork!

This week the class is working on building a larger model of a wind turbine, which was on display at the convention. This model will stand approximately five feet high.  In addition, the students are using the smaller wind turbine model to test their blade designs to ascertain which design is the most efficient. Then the design will be upsized so we can install it on the larger model.

After the students complete their design they are required to prepare a spreadsheet and graph of the test results. The blades are tested at zero, 15, 30, 45 and 90 degrees from the vertical axis in the clockwise and counter clockwise direction. During the test, the fan is placed at a given distance from the test blades with the test speed of the fan cycling through low, medium and high. This method will provide the students with enough data to create a good spreadsheet and chart.

The energy for the model will be supplied by the solar panels array we are going to construct. Yes, you will have to stay tuned to find out what happens next. Will the experiment crash and burn?  Will the train run off the track?  Or will the great panel in the sky save the day?  STAY TUNE!!!!!

It has been almost a month since the convention, but I’d like to reflect back on our experience as presenters in the Great Ideas Forum.

First, who would have thought there is more to the convention than free pens and bags?  I must admit I was completely taken back by how much interaction there was at our booth. It felt great to talk to teachers that are doing some type of Wind Turbine or windmill project in their classrooms, or looking for projects to do.  Most of the teachers taught science, but when we discussed how we had math, science, art and tech all intertwined, they would comment that they would go back to their school and try to incorporate it.

Some hindsight, if I get the opportunity to be a presenter again. Set up everything Wednesday night. Try to condense everything into one bag so when you leave on Friday it is manageable. I would have a LOT more pictures of the students working at various stages of the project. We had most of the photos on DVD’s but for some reason they wouldn’t play. Also I would bring a few more easels or some type of backing that would stand, to display more samples of the students’ work. Personally I would pack a little cooler with drinks and snacks, mostly for Thursday. I found we had a constant flow of people in the booth on Thursday and I didn’t want to leave; I was enjoying talking to everyone. Also the lines at the food stands tended to be long. Friday was much slower and that is the time I had the chance to go and check out the convention. I found myself stopping to ask more questions at the various booths this year than in the past. I know that was because I liked it when people stopped to talk to us or had some interest, and would just asked us a question and then moved on.

Overall it reinforced my opinion of teachers. NO not that they just want free stuff, but that the GREAT majority are hardworking individuals that are constantly trying to learn and improve. See you at the next convention.

While at the NJEA Convention last week, a few teachers asked about the wind turbine model design that was on our table at the Great Ideas Forum. We told them that we would post the instructions and drawings on our blog. I have completed the drawings and a cost estimate – if you have any questions, feel free to post them.  Click on the drawings below to enlarge.

Here’s a photo of us at Convention.  Wes is the devastatingly handsome man on the left; Dave is the devastatingly handsome man on the right.

Convention was a whirlwind, but we’ll be updating the blog over the next few days with our insights and experiences, including the Hipp Celebration on Friday, November 7.

The first quarter is starting to approach the end; the following is a list of some of the topics that were covered during this quarter.

1. Anatomy of a solar cell – the electron flow provides the current, and the cell’s electric field causes a voltage. With both current and voltage, we have electrical power.
2. Basic structure of a generic silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell
a. Single-crystal silicon
b. Polycrystalline silicon
3. Alternative energy vocabulary list.
4. Calculating payback for a photovoltaic system
5. Energy loss in a solar cell.
6. How do solar panels work?
7.  Types of panels
a. Monocrystalline silicon panels
b. Polycrystalline silicon panels
c. String ribbon or thin-layer silicon panels
d. amorphous silicon panels or thin film
8. Enhanced panels
a. building-integrated PV panels
b. concentrator systems
c. high-efficiency multijunction devices
9. Typical costs for photovoltaic solar systems

The aforementioned areas shall be expanded on during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarter classes. In addition to expanding the subject matter, we will complete the construction of the second solar lab structure and install the solar panels, batteries and solar panel mounting racks.

The 7th grade technology class is starting to finalize the components for the Solar Environment Lab. The class was broken up into teams; each team was assigned a phase of the project to do research on.

• Team one – solar panels.
• Team two – proposed equipment that is used only with DC current.
• Team three – proposed equipment that is used only with AC current.
• Team four  – will use the Excel program to develop a spreadsheet and chart showing a graph of the cost between using solar or the public utility electrical supply (daily, weekly, monthly and yearly).
• Team five – will take all information gathered by the teams and prepare a Powerpoint presentation.

The class needed to use Ohm’s Law after they obtained the equipment electrical characteristics, to find either the watts or amps used by the equipment.  Once they found all the equipment loads, we were ready to discuss which solar panel size would best meet our requirements.

Team one has found that the Photovoltaic (PV) panels mainly absorb infrared rays of the sun to convert into electric energy. The other rays in light spectrum coming from the sun are not absorbed and is lost as heat. This is what reduces the panel efficiency to between 5 – 18 percent.

Team one is in the process now of finding which company makes the most efficient solar panel and would be cost effective or should they lower the efficiency to bring the cost down. 

The 7th grade technology class is a quarterly (9-10 weeks) class, so portions of the project will not be accomplished during this quarter, but continued in the second, third and fourth quarters with the new 7th grade technology classes.  This is also by design, so I can explore new avenues with the each class.

Mr. Jack Walker is the Supervisor of maintenance and custodial staff at Berlin Community School. I can honestly say that this man is a jack-of-all-trades (no pun intended), but with one exception to that phrase, he is surely a master of all.

Any time the team found the need to bounce ideas around of a technical nature such as for electrical hook-ups, routing of wiring, availability of wind turbine installations locations he was available to provide that information.

Anyone working in a school environment would know how busy the maintenance and custodial departments are during the school year, but Mr. Walker always found time when asked, to give us the proper direction or another viewpoint.

In addition, we asked Mr. Walker to review the wiring diagrams for wind turbine project; he did and made suggestions that improved the outcome of this most successful project.

We installed the wind turbine generator on the roof and for safety; the students were not permitted up there.  Mr. Walker volunteered to come in on his day-off to help the team install the wind turbine on the roof.

The student’s and the instructional team’s appreciation goes out to MR. WALKER with our sincere THANKS.

NOW I remember why I usually don’t start the year off with Geometry, but we are through the basics – area, perimeter and a little volume. When we revisit it later in the year all the students will have been through their tech classes and had some hands on activities with geometry, so hopefully it will go much smoother. 

On with the rest of the year, Tech students will start building the 2nd greenhouse with our “Future Act” students. Future Act is a Group of students that volunteer for various charitable activities in the community. They will also start working on learning about Solar panel use – they will build a solar panel car and test it, along with other activities Wes Hill will discuss in his blogs. 

In math we will start to gather information from Tech to use throughout the year. The info the student’s record with their solar panel activities I will incorporate in the math lessons. Based on last years “Wind Turbine” project some of the concepts we will be able to incorporate from this years Solar Panel project into math are – mean, median and mode, percentage, ratios, rates, scaling, fractions, decimals and percents. With the solar panels and greenhouse we will also incorporate area, perimeter, and volume.

What I will do with each concept is use the Solar Panel project as a reference for what the students are going to do or what they have all ready done. Either way they have a practical application for the math they are learning. I’ll keep you informed to know what worked and what didn’t work.

This week in technology I started by demonstrating to the students how to use a multimeter (digital and analog). I provided the student with different size batteries and asked them to find the appropriate scale to determine if the batteries were good.  Once they felt comfortable with using the multimeter, I provided them with several small solar cells and multimeters so they could get the voltage readings from the cell in different locations throughout the building and outside.  This information was gathered to create a database and make a chart on Excel, in addition to being used to compare the readings from the larger photovoltaic cells that we will install later.

During the instructional portions of the class, the students were told that a solar cell is like a one-way street (diode) and that the electrons can only move in one direction. We also, discuss the construction of the solar cell, quartz sand (silicon) which has been altered by adding other chemical elements (boron or phosphorus). This would create two layers in the silicon with different electrical characteristics.  When light hits the silicon is causes electricity to be produced.

I asked the class to research solar panels and pay close attention to how they are rated. They found out that the capacity ratings for solar panel was in watts and that solar panels can only convert one fifth of the incoming solar energy into electrical energy.