Elizabeth Redmond

Kids Line Up to Generate Energy!

Categories: alteranative energy, berger park, changents, kids, POWERleap, sustainable design

Jul 15, 2008 07:35 am 2 Comments

Last Thursday, I met with some kids in Berger Park near the Andersonville Neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. The presentation was for a group of kids who are in a Sustainable Design summer program. Two days out of the week the kids meet for about four hours each to learn about sustainable design. The program, of about ten 13-year old kids, is hosted by a college friend from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design. This summer they have already visited the Chicago Center for Green Technology where they learned about greenroofs, geothermal heating and cooling, sustainable materials, LEED certifications, rain barrels, solar panels, etc. They also visited the Museum of Science and Industry's exhibit on the "Green Home" where they learned about different energy saving technologies for the home.

Since these visits, they have begun to draw up some plans on how to green the Berger Park Cultural Center- the building where they meet, that, in their opinion, is "falling apart". Their plan is to make some repairs, and in the meantime learn how to make them sustainably and possibly raise the funds to install some alternative energies. Once they have their plans drawn up, they plan to meet with the neighborhood Alderman to get help moving forward.

On Thursday, I took two of the POWERleap tiles, set them up, and explained quickly how their kinetic energy can be used to make electrical energy. I explained this through Newton's very simple law of Physics that "energy can't be created nor destroyed"- if we take our kinetic energy and funnel it through an interface that turns it into electrical energy, we are investing our activity in a way that we can experience twice! Once this registered with them, they all lined up to turn their motion into electricity!

Energy is fascinatingly simple to explain to kids (simple in a way the POWERleap is intended to be simple) and the moment they understood POWERleap, they had a whole new layer of questions about static, friction, momentum, etc. A day of kinetic-alternative energy fun turned into a great learning opportunity for me. I look forward to seeing the ideas these kids come up with.