Evergreen Highlights Student Eco-Friendly Initiatives

Greenhill students often learn about problem solvers, whether they are historical rulers who faced and overcame adversity, scientists who made incredible discoveries, or mathematicians who have come up with theorems and formulas that are the basis for the math students study today.

In Middle School, students themselves are the problem solvers. Under Don Myers, STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) Facilitator, sixth grade students are making things they never thought possible at such a young age: solar-powered phone chargers.

Not only are they making them, but they are also having fun doing it.
“[The project] was like an addicting game that you don’t want to stop,” said Everett Graves, a sixth grader in Mr. Myers’s Exploratory Design class.
Students in Exploratory Design, required for all sixth grade students, began the unit by talking about solar electricity and how it works. They started brainstorming things that they use daily and would want to charge. Cell phones were the first things that came to mind.

The project was split into two separate and unrelated parts: making a box in a 3-D modeling program called SketchUp that the phone would sit in, and making all of the circuits work.

Students started by measuring the size of their devices and used these measurements to make a box to scale in SketchUp. The boxes were printed using a 3-D printer.

They then made the circuitry. Mr. Myers soldered wire (fused while still allowing conductivity) that connected the solar panel to AA batteries. The panel charged the batteries and wire connected them to a USB circuit that bumped the charge from two volts up to five. They needed the five volts to charge a phone. They are able to use a regular charging cord for any phone, plugging it into the USB circuit to charge the phone.

Since the solar panel is charging the batteries that charge the phone, the phone can be charged even when the solar panel is not in direct sunlight.
This project took over half of the first trimester. Students had to be patient, as there was a lot of trial and error, according to both Mr. Myers and Everett.
“When kids design something, they expect their design to print out and be just as they thought it would,” Mr. Myers said.

But the project proved this is not the case. It usually took at least two prints to get the box the students designed on SketchUp to print the way they wanted it to.

“[The project has involved] lots of trials and failures,” Everett said.
At each stage, the student engineers had to identify what was causing their chargers to turn out differently than they imagined, and figure out a way to fix it.

Problem solving was the main lesson that Mr. Myers said he wanted to pass on to the students. According to him, learning to build the charger was not as important, nor was the aspect of saving energy, as the chargers do not actually save a substantial amount of energy.

“It’s not as much about being technologically savvy as becoming better problem solvers, and saying, ‘What do I need to do now that it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to?’” Mr. Myers said. “It’s about teaching the kids what can be done and what the future holds in terms of solar power.”
For the students, this project was an opportunity to create things on their own that they can actually use.

“I think it’s really cool that something you’re doing could actually matter,” Everett said.
The project also challenges students to think about what they could do on their own with what they learned if they transfer the same concepts to a larger scale.

“One little panel can charge a cell phone. Well, what if we made 100 of these panels? What could it do? Could it power a room in your house? Could it power a few items in your house?” Mr. Myers said.

Mr. Myers said he sees this as an introduction to what could end up being a future career path for many of his students. “I think that one of the future industries that a lot of the kids are going to go into is engineering in terms of alternative sources of energy. I mean wind farms, solar farms, nuclear power plants,” Mr. Myers said.

Mr. Myers is not only creating a curriculum, but also planting a seed and developing a new generation of engineers.

While most groups took their chargers home, one group donated their charger to the Class of 2015. It is currently in the senior pod.
“The thought that if that’s still there when we get into high school we get to use it [is amazing],” said sixth grader Noah Grimsley.
Many of the students who participated in this project have an appreciation for the chance Mr. Myers gave them to try something seemingly complex at such a young age.

“Solar panels to create energy is just cool in sixth grade. I never thought I would be able to work with solar power,” Noah said.

Sixth grade students held car keys, fanned car exhaust piepes, and hopped from car to car with pollution monitors as part of their experiment to test black carbon and ozone gas levels in the air due to car emissions.
Teacher Megan VanWart’s sixth grade science class borrowed cars belonging to various teachers on campus to conduct their experiment.

“We actually did it ourselves, and found our own results instead of looking at someone else’s. We got to interact with each other. We got to really have a lot of fun, and we also learned a lot,” said Antonio Johri, sixth grader.

Ms. VanWart noticed the excitement of the students.

“Of course they all wanted to hold the keys, and to know whose car [is whose], and most of them took their jobs very seriously,” Ms. Van Wart said.
Once they collected data from the 14 cars, the students analyzed the way gas type and car age affected the pollution produced.

They could not control all of the factors affecting the experiment, but some of their findings included that when running on premium gas, the cars seemed to emit more black carbon.

“At one point there were three cars that were running all in the same area, and we got a very large spike of black carbon. It ended up being 23,700 nanograms per meter cubed, and that was only with three cars running, so you can imagine a drive-thru line or a carpool when you have a lot more cars running,” Ms. VanWart said.

When emailing teachers about volunteering their cars for the project, Ms. VanWart made sure the teachers lending their cars were well aware that sixth graders would not be in the front seat.

“When [teachers] reach out and ask for assistance, I think we recognize that what’s happening in that class is of true value, and we want to help in whatever way we can because we know that [those experiences make] Greenhill what it is,” Ms. VanWart said.

Ms. VanWart discovered Global Ozone Project (GO3P) at a booth a few years ago in a National Science Teachers Association Conference, which she went to as a part of the New Science Teachers Academy to view lectures, seminars and workshops.

As a whole, the project educates sixth through twelfth grade students on ground-level ozone, and the harmful effects of air pollution.
Pollution, including ozone and black carbon, which the sixth graders are measuring, can irritate the lungs, especially for people with asthma or other respiratory problems.

These sixth graders also learned how to treat the environment.
“I now take shorter showers because of the combustion used to heat the water,” one said.

The sixth graders not only measured teachers’ car pollution emission, but they also went on walks around school collecting information on air pollution across campus.

As expected, they found different levels of black carbon and ozone in the atmosphere. Afterwards, they analyzed their data using sensors sent to the school from GO3P. On a Google Earth map, they then observed red and yellow spikes representing ozone and black carbon levels.

One sixth grade student reflected on their impact on the Earth. “I just tried to do all I could: I didn’t use aerosol, didn’t litter, or do anything that could hurt the environment,” said sixth grader Alison Thieberg.“It makes me, when I am able to get my own car, want to get an electric car to help out the atmosphere and environment,” said another student.

Another experiment the sixth graders conducted was placing index cards with petroleum jelly around campus, including their classroom.
They did this to study the effects of air pollution and car exhaust on petroleum jelly.

“It was really fun. We were hanging [up] one of the note cards, and my friend got stuck in a tree,” Alison said.
This particular hands-on learning experience shows students the real effects of pollution in daily life.

“When I first found out about [the effect of pollution on the environment], I didn’t really like to hear about it because it scared me. But I think it’s important for people to know what’s going on. We’re actually seeing, here at Greenhill, [that] this is what we’re breathing in and how it relates to our life.”