Stone Henge Technology

Yesterday my friend Zach, a physics teacher in California, sent me this clip of a guy who has a passion for moving heavy objects. Odd, yes, but it seems that he may have stumbled upon the method used for moving the monoliths of Stone Henge. The principles are simple, so it seems plausible.

Maybe I'll use this clip when I teach center of gravity. Enjoy!

Photovoltaics Cheaper Than Coal?

As we think about the future of the high school's roof space, I'm torn between visions of a rooftop garden or photovoltaics.

How are we going to afford any (additional) photovoltaics?

My dad recently passed on this link to Nanosolar's new solar cell technology - basically conductive ink printed on a metal substrate. I'm sure it's efficiency is crap (though they're not publicly sharing their specs), but efficiency isn't the goal here - the point is they're wicked cheap. So cheap, in fact, they're being touted as "cheaper than coal" per kWh. What? Did I hear that correctly? Cheaper than coal? Where do I sign up? :)

The solar panels we put on the school's greenhouse were predicted to pay for themselves in 50 years. Great. I'll probably have retired by then. Their site doesn't list prices either, so it's hard to verify that any of it is actually true. Otherwise you know I'd be running the calculation myself on this page. heh.

I'd like to dream of super cheap photovoltaics on our roof, but for now I'll have to wait: They're sold out for the next 12 months. :P

Roof Top Garden for the High School?

Today I had a structural engineer from DeWolfe Engineering come talk to my class about what he does and also about the possibility of putting a green roof on the school - my students' idea. 

I personally haven't decided what I think about it. 

First of all, we've got to find the plans for the roof, and no one has found them :( I think it'll basically come down to this: either the structure was built with strength enough to one day support an additional floor (in which case we're good to go), or not (in which case, it's probably not going to happen).  And it really could go either way. 

We've got a potential grant lined up that could help us pay for it through enVision Montpelier , but we've got to get some of these issues squared away first. 

It was totally good  having this guy come in cause, well, I don't know jack about structures. Engineering was not my bag.  Paper physics is so much cleaner. (I am converting into a hands-on person, but it's a slow process). 

Teaching Big Idea Over Time

I realize I take a risk by saying this, but ...

I'm going for National Board Certification this year. Like 4 teachers from my school went for it last year, and 3 got it, and that one teacher... well, I'm sure she wishes that she hadn't told people she was going for it. :P

Anyway, I had my first real freak-out session this week. Ok, so freaking out for me mainly includes listening to loud music and combing my fingers through my hair and since I just got it cut that means it just sticks straight up. Yes, I have stress-o-meter hair. "Oh my! Looks like the Lorax's not having a great day - her hair is pretty much on end! I thought you needed Elmer's glue to get it to stick out like that!"

I'm working on the entry entitled "Teaching a Big Idea Over Time", for which I've chosen F=ma, aka the relationship between force and motion. That's huge. For this Big Idea you have to submit 3 lesson plans, which ideally show
1) a connection to technology
2) a connection to other disciplines
3) how you accomodate your lessons for the specific needs/abilities/interests of your students

And

4) Each lesson has to produce individual student work which shows a progression of the student's understanding towards this Big Idea.

There's a bunch more, but I think just even finding lessons which meet these requirements is tough. I mean, I've got stuff which will work for this, but took a lot of thought to put it all together. Anyway, it was this fourth item which had me in fits this last week. So I re-thought through my 3 lessons, got a new plan (after my hair was 2x normal volume), and in the jubilation of having worked it out danced around my living room to the "King of Spain" by Moxy Fruvous.

Let's this version of The Plan works out. :P

Carbon Offsets/Credits: Only a Temporary Solution

Small correction: getting people carbon offset credits for Christmas might send the wrong message. "Hey, take an extra drive in your car today! It's on me ;) " Not the goal. After talking with my friends Colin the Radical and Bart my Bus Buddy they pointed out that carbon credits are not a sustainable solution - we can't just keep planting trees or building more methane digestors as a means of "making up for" our carbon pooping.

So coming back to my senses - carbon offsets are merely a temporary solution until we can find overhaul some large-scale systems. Now, just how to change those systems? No dream to big, what would it take?

I'm Getting Carbon for Christmas (With a Little Help From NativeEnergy)

As I was contemplating what to get people for Christmas I stumbled upon this post by Grist: Ten great ideas for "stuff-free" holiday gifts". And some of her ideas were pretty sweet, I'm a big fan of stopping someone's junk mail (provided they're don't actually want their junk mail to burn in their woodstove). But of course the thing which caught my eye was the carbon offset site from Tufts University, which is just about how to choose a carbon-offset program or company, and thankfully for us lazy folk, they have some recommended programs at the bottom of the page. the only US-based company was called NativeEnergy.

So I'm digging through their projects and my heart-rate is increasing because this stuff is just so sweet, and so you can imagine my heart rather freezing when I read under their previous successes about a project they did in my home town! Essex Junction Municipal Biogas Center.

The Tufts site didn't recommend carbon sequestration programs through protecting forests because not much is known about a forests ability to sequester carbon long-term, so programs that create new clean energy sources or are just a different way to "offset" your emissions.

I think I know what I'm getting people for Christmas :) ...

Greenhouse Energy Feasibility Study

Two years ago one of the biology teachers at my school asked me about the recently built greenhouse. They needed a pump for an irrigation system, but that meant adding another electric appliance, and would it be possible to install some kind of renewable power source right there at the greenhouse? Like a windmill, or solar panels, or something.

So I took it to the kids: What kind of renewable energy source should we install here? They broke into groups, did some research and came back with some calculations around energy, electricity, and power (thank you Vermont Framework of Standards!) and also a recommendation as to whether or not this would be a good option for us here at the school.

They ended up presenting their findings to the principal, head custodian, the original bio teacher, and the service learning coordinator. The class consensus discussed there with all these stakeholders was that we ought to pursue a photovoltaic system to power not just the irrigation pump, but all the electric appliances in the greenhouse (computer, fans, etc.), to which the administration replied, "if you can find the money!" :)

(Later that week in the Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day line a parent of one of my students came up to me and said, "I'm on the Montpelier Energy Team and we need to talk". Woe. Ok. And basically he invited me to bring my class to present at the next energy team meeting!)

(Then the fine people at Knowles Science Teaching Foundation heard about the project, they flew two students and I out to Chicago to be a main presenter at their summer fellow's meeting!)

So the next year was called writing a million grants (ok, maybe just a few), but we got some of them (Vermont Community Foundation, Toshiba America Grant, MHS Boosters, etc.), and by the time the next school year was out we'd raised enough money. So a team from Solar Works, Inc. donated their time and worked alongside a team of students from that year on the installation.

And Now... Today... I feel some amount of confidence in the data output system. Fronius collects the data and displays it on this website, which I've found slightly difficult to navigate, but we've got data there for AC power, ambient temperature, module temperature, irradiance, and wind speed. We had a few glitches - it wasn't recording data for a few days towards the end of November, but it should be working now... even though output is extremely low and intermittent right now since they're smothered with snow.

If the above link asks you, the
login: student
password: greenhousepv

Then go to the tab PV Systems, then select Montpelier High School Greenhouse under Third Party Systems, then select Archive over on the left to see all the logged data about wind speed, AC power, etc. And I'll leave you to mess about with it to figure out the navigation. Happy surfing! :)