Quiz Boards and Turbines!

Once again today, we spent our morning at BCA working on outreach activities with the students. The first activity of the day was electric quiz boards. The inspiration for this project came from Shobhita; it was based on a project she did when she was younger. The presentation included discussing series circuits, electron movement, and circuit completion. These topics built on the concepts from the propeller cars, so the students were familiar with the material.

Students were given cardboard, a light bulb, battery, brass fasteners, and wires. Students needed to create a circuit such that when a wire from the battery and a wire from the light bulb were connected to a question and answer pair, the light bulb would light up.

The students broke up into their same groups from the previous day to tackle the project! They all created quiz questions related to the morning’s presentation such as conductors and Ohm’s Law. Once the board was complete, they worked with another group to quiz each other.

The first activity concluded with a brief follow-up discussion where the students talked about the importance of teamwork and communication.

The second activity was wind turbines. The presentation included many of the concepts from the Engineering 100 section focused on wind energy. We covered drag force, lift force, and varieties of wind turbines. This activity required the student teams to build their own Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT). They were given a variety of materials including cardboard, foam, bottle caps, and cardstock. The blades of the turbine were connected to a motor so the energy created would be stored in the motor causing it to act like a generator.

Once the teams completed their turbines, a voltmeter was used to measure the energy generated. The winning team was able to produce 32 mV of energy! The day, once again, concluded with a discussion reiterating the concepts discussed and the importance of teamwork and communication.

We briefly returned to the guest house for lunch and then went back to meet with the teachers. At today’s discussion we learned about the Indian education system and compared it to the United States’ system. We also asked the teachers what types of activities and concepts they would like to see presented.

The SWE members who were not on the March trip toured the Walchandnagar factory (in hard hats!), where they were able to meet with employees and learn about the different industries Walchandnagar in involved with.

We ended the day preparing for the following day’s activities!

-Emily