ISEEBI - Integrated School Energy Education and Building Improvement

The following was executed by the teachers and the students responded directly.  A more formal assessment is being evaluated.

Which of the following design activities did you enjoy the most?         

•             House Design
•             Windmill Design
•             Water wheel Design

Which of the following lab activities was your favorite?

•             Nuclear Energy Shielding using Geiger Counter
•             Measuring Window Thermal Efficiency
•             Measuring temperature increase Domestic Water Heater
•             Measuring Light Bulb heat generation
•              Measuring watt production by a solar panel

 Which of the following lab activities was your least favorite? Why?

<no answers !>

Detroit News, Mr. Bjorn Lomborg

There was a news item that came across my email courtesty of Alliance to Save Energy. It was an OpEd piece from the Detroit News. It talked about the need for adults to speak carefully and accurately about Global Warming.

It pointed out that most US and UK citizens don’t believe humans are responsible, yet many many children think we are all going to die.

We were aware of this concern during Camp Energy, and to the best of my knowledge we didn’t address it - on purpose. We felt it was more important to focus on that which the students could change at a young age, than that which we must change before it is their turn to run things.

The article also reminded me of the deep despair I felt when growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s concerning the huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons held by the USSR and the USA (and that didn’t even count France, England, China, India, Pakistan and possibly one other country in the middle east).

Bottom line, let’s focus on education and actionable training. The increasing number of Polar Bears deserve as much.

The Batt tooks some nice shots of the students learning at Camp Energy last week:

http://media.www.thebatt.com/media/storage/paper657/news/2009/06/29/Features/Learning.To.Go.Green-3749419.shtml

First, I’m pleased that we haven’t had any disasters with the activities, students, nor teachers.  Some things happened late, some activities where implemented differently then planned, but in all cases, the students saw the intended outcome.

They are most excited when they are engaged individually, and less so in groups.  Considering the student’s attention span is “measured in minutes equal to their age”, we managed to keep all but one really engaged (of the 30 students who showed up on day 1).

One of the many objectives of the Camp is to evaluate the activities for use in the classroom next year.  To that end we’ve made some discoveries.  This material is best for the 6th grade.  That the hands on experiments need to be “cloned” so that enough equipment is available to have an entire school do the activities on the same day.  Thus three material stands won’t work.  We’ll need on the order of 21 to 30 for the typical BISD middle school (3 classes of 30 students).

Beside the cost, the setup and storage time are concerns.  I think the only way to do this effectively will be to provide ONE setup for the teacher to demonstrate in class, and then virtualize a more extensive version for the students to do on their computers. I keep seeing the Muppet (TM) scientist in his lab, but online using Flash technology…..

The teachers are taking lots of notes to provide feedback for “next year” and we have a pre/post assessment for the students as well.

Informal discussions indicate that the students are going home and telling friends and family about what they learned …

We were flattered to be extensively covered by the Batt this Tuesday here.

We were honored to have some coverage in our College’s newsletter:

http://engineering.tamu.edu/news/index.php/2009/06/

The Bryan/College Station Home Builders Association (HBA) has joined our list of sponsors!

“The Bryan College Station Home Builders Association is a local professional trade organization, affiliated with the Texas Association of Builders and the National Association of Home Builders, chartered in 1967 to promote and protect the building industry and its customers in Brazos County and its contiguous counties.”

Well, given the paperwork delays, we were able to obtain interim funding and begin construction.  The staff at Riverside were very helpful in design assistance, tooling, materials, fabrication, and testing/display space.

Due to the time crunch we decided to postpone the construction of the wall/roofing units and focus on smaller, lighter construction.  We ended up with:

• PV Panel (DC) with fan and voltmeter
• Domestic Hot Water Panel- gravity fed (the pump worked too well and was overheating). [Not pictured'
• 3 station materials test stand with 5 different materials
• 2 station interior lighting stand with 2 lighting types
• Trade window stand with 3 different trade windows (and a solar screen)

Between now and the Camp Energy we hope to add:

• Insulation test stand
• Sample wall sections
• Sample roofing sections

Our tooling consists of:

• 250W heat lamp on stand
• Infrared Thermometer
• DC Fan
• DC Voltmeter
• AC Amp meter

We tested it (See pics below) using a real 13yr old who just graduated from 8th grade.  He was of real help and made LOTS of suggestions.  So Did Dr. Culp, Jim, Kelly and our Sr. Mechanical Engineering.

Here are some pictures of the built stands... still don't know about painting them.. Our 13yr old consultant says "raw is cool".  Ok, we'll see what the teachers say about that.

http://www.academyofenergy.org/index.html

These folks are mostly sponsored by Johnson Controls, a major leader in energy management systems. ESL works with Johnson Controls at most of their Continuous Commissioning (R) sites.

Enercon LLC has delivered three sample windows to us for use in the program. One is a Vinyl clad, double pane, low-e window. Another is a single pane, insulated with a solar screen. And finally, we have a single pane aluminum frame window for “worse case”. Well, wood is worse, but we aren’ t going there!
I’ll get a picture up as soon as I can.