Let me pose a question to you: How can we capture renewable energy from natural sources?

This was a question posed to me in both science and math. It was posed in both in these courses because we merged both the sciences of natural energy and the mathematics of liner graphs into our end of unit project. Our task for this project was to build a generator to create energy in nature  (Science) as well as showing it on a liner graph (Math).

My group Hannah, Sam, and Adam had a few ideas on how to design our generator. Our first idea was to build a model car with generators on each wheel. This way, while rolling down a hill, it would convert its kinetic energy (the wheels spinning) into electrical energy using the motors. Unfortunately we only had motors that went one way so we had to switch tacks and move on from our car idea to our next design.

Our next design was a water wheel. The plan was to have the water wheel (generator) put into a running river , which would result in the water, from the river, making the wheel spin, thus the generator creating energy. To demonstrate the energy created, we also connected a series of LED lights. This means that if there was electricity flowing – the lights would light-up.

During the making of our generator we used our core competencies (Communication, Thinking, and Social Skills) to help divide up the work. We first communicated the program, then we thought through the problem, and then used our social skills to figured out who would do what to solve the problem. My main job was to build the generator and light circuits, as well as make sure they work. To do this we made the paddles of our generator out of plastic spoons reinforced with chopsticks. This was the first proto type of our water wheel. It featured only four paddles as well as one LED light. Eventually we upgraded the water wheel to eight paddles so it could be more efficient and light four LEDs instead of one.

Now that we had created a generator,  we would be finished the project right? Wrong!

The next step of this project was to create an advertisement for our new renewable energy generator. This was probably my favourite part of the project because it allowed us to see how creative we could be. The ad we created had a bit of a cheesy beginning and end (we made it look a bit like an infomercial) but the rest of the ad contained some very real facts and information about our generator. For example: our generator can charge an iPhone in about three hours. Thinking back at the feedback from our teacher, we could have incorporated another graph into the video as well as footage of the LED lighting that was the result of it being in the river, instead of us just turning it by hand.

This unit taught me quite a bit about energy generation from nature. To show you just how much I leaned, I have created two mind maps of what I know about energy in nature: the first shows what I knew before this unit and the second shows what I now know having completed the unit.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my post!