Sustainable Design

Energize a sunflower with solar panels that students will connect to a motor and test. Decorate and bring your flower to life with color and movement. Learn how solar power works and creates clean renewable energy with its infinite possibilities.

All creatures live in a web of resources that support or suppress their growth. Learn about ecosystems and create a dynamic model of an insect’s or bird’s world. Suspend a magnetized creature on a pendulum. Add food and shelter (with magnets) that attract the creature and predators and hazards that repel it. The creature navigates a complex and fascinating path.

Build a windmill with adjustable vanes. You will discover that in order to make it work, the vanes have to be adjusted just right to turn fast enough to work. Then apply that wind power to make it work. How? By making it lift weight, you can observe just how much power output it can produce. You will discover the problem of scale and its limitations but the potential is there.

Understand the gearing needed to manage the lift. About the relationship between speed and power. It's not necessarily intuitive.