2010 Green Expo - Save the Dates Oct 7 & 8, 2010
Inservice Event ~ Clock Hours Available
Still Shop,
But Different
Maia Hanson thought she wanted to be an engineer. So she signed up last year to join ShopGirls, an all-girl team at Granite Falls High School that was going to build a super fuel efficient prototype automobile. But as the car project moved forward, a funny thing happened to Maia’s career plans.
"Building the car made me realize engineering isn’t something that I’m passionate about," Maia says. "But it really helped me with life skills – with communicating, time management, project planning, being part of a team, just learning how to work with people."
We couldn’t think of a better introduction to the line up of exhibits for this year’s Green Industrial Business and Career Expo.
Like previous events, the Expo will include exhibits about real-life green industrial applications. But in 2010, the Expo will also include green-related learning projects that often helped students like Maia not only gain new skills, but make new discoveries about themselves, their interests and their aptitudes.
The exhibit line up includes the following:
Iron Maiden
The girls who built the car in Granite Falls named it "The Iron Maiden" because they say it tortured them nearly every day by presenting new, highly demanding learning challenges. But they stuck with it, and, with the help of teacher Michael Werner, they designed and built a car that gets an astounding 470 miles to a gallon of diesel.
Their car qualified for the Shell Oil Company Eco-marathon Americas competition in Houston, Texas, where the Iron Maiden took first place in the prototype diesel category and the ShopGirls became the first all female group to participate.
Maia was picked to drive the car for the Houston competition, basically for two reasons. First, she was one of only two team members with a driver’s license. Second, well she’s Maia.
It takes about 10 minutes around the ShopGirlsto realize that of course Maia would drive the car just like Maia would do it if someone needed to give an interview to the news media, talk to Governor Gregoire, shake hands with President Obama, become a famous fashion designer, fly the Space Shuttle, cure cancer or run The Boeing Company. Leadership is part of good team work and Maia has that role nailed.
The Expo will provide an opportunity to see the Iron Maiden and meet the ShopGirls on Thursday, October 7, with a workshop Friday, October 8 where you can learn how the project came together.
It turns out that building a car isn’t just about automotive science and tool use. Says teacher Michael Werner:
"The students think they are building a car, but they are really learning how to do some really, really hard things." Like what? "Learning how to work together. Realizing that not everything in the life is instant gratification. They are also learning about themselves. Who are they? What do they want to do in life?"
The girls also learned to not only get along with each other, but with their shop teacher.
Werner is a graduate of the Swiss Air Force Aerospace Machining Apprenticeship program and he pursued a career in aerospace before becoming a teach er at mid-career.
He retains a slight Germanic accent and is very soft spoken. But to the ShopGirls he came across at first like Kaiser Bill. It took some time to get used to each other, but before too long, everything was fine.
Observes ShopGirl Semira Kern: "He was very demanding at the start, and he wasn’t the most sensitive teacher around. He didn’t have good people skills. But, he grew on us."
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Energy Smart
A faculty lounge conversation between shop teacher Jim Neiman and chemistry teacher Gwen Thompson helped launch an award-winning program at Heritage High School in Vancouver, Washington.
The conversation started with the news that, the night before, Thompson’s son had brewed up some biofuel in his mom’s kitchen. It inspired Neiman, Thompson and other teachers to cook up an interdisciplinary program in which Heritage students research, brew and use biodiesel.
The biodiesel program was the Grand Prize winner at the Imagine Tomorrow competition at Washington State University this year and is now the core of an Energy Smart environmental science program at Heritage that offers learning projects based on solar power, recycling, horticulture, "Bio Char" and the need to stay friendly with the local fire department.
Heritage school began producing so much biodiesel, and hazardous byproducts, the local fire department stepped in, inspiring the school to work with local businesses to create an outstanding biodiesel safety program.
The safety improvements included a trailer so the brewing equipment can be removed from the school while the biodiesel is being brewed. The trailer also makes it possible for the students to roll into the Expo next fall for an exhibit and a workshop.
Some shop programs suffer from poor support from school principals. Neiman says he gets great support from his principal, Anne Sosky, who remained supportive even during the talks with the fire department. "I don’t know what life would be like without support from my principal, because I’ve always had it."
Alternative Energy
In the rural expanses of northeast Washington it is not unusual for families to live "off the grid." Which means they sometimes rely on solar, wind and even home made hydroelectric systems to support their homes and businesses.
According to teacher Ron Noble, that community knowledge base provides added oomph for the Alternative Energy program at Colville High School because the students get to learn first-hand from practitioners how different power systems work.
The program covers solar, wind and electrical power and the technologies required to support them. Noble’s team mates in the class include fellow teachers Tom Strobel and Emil Rosenberg as well as the alternative energy users who live around Colville.
Students from Colville will come to the Expo with three electric vehicles that they’ve salvaged and revamped. The first was an old Cushman Truckster that they spotted standing as a hulk along the road on a trip to the Puget Sound Energy Wild Horse wind farm in Ellensburg.
The school bought the vehicle for $500. Noble says the previous owner did not have a manual for the vehicle, so the students had to develop their own while they rewired and restored the vehicle. The Truckset is now used at the high school to do things like move hurdles during track meets and power up the soccer scoreboard.
The class is presently working on Programmable Logic Controllers (PCLs), computerized switching units that are used to run machines and control electricity in a power grid.
The class helps students develop strong electronic skills and there are growing ties between the program and post-secondary education programs. An articulation agreement is in place with Spokane Community College and talks are underway with four-year universities.
Many of us think electricity comes from the nearest light switch. The Colville students are smarter than that and Noble feels the program helps students understand the range of career options available to people who understand the modern systems that generate, store and distribute the electric resources that power our daily lives.
"The students who take the class are surprised at the different avenues you can take with electricity," Noble says. "People take electricity for granted. They don’t know where it comes from or how it works."
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Manure to Methane to Electricity
Anaerobic digesters are high-tech septic systems that can convert manure to methane which can then be used as natural gas or to generate electricity. Large digesters are being built at dairy farms to help reduce the environmental impacts of cow manure while producing power that can be sold to help reduce digester construction and operating expenses.
The Metro sewage treatment plant in Renton is another version of an anaerobic digestion system. The massive plant creates a large volume of methane that is purified and sent directly to a natural gas pipeline, earning Metro revenues of about $3,000 per day. But, could an anaerobic digester be built through a high school shop class? The Expo is trying to find out through a partnership with Lew Keliher, a shop teacher at Auburn High School in south King County, and Tony Judah, an engineering instructor in the Yelm School District in Pierce County. They are building a prototype digester that will be displayed at the Green Expo. The learning potential of digesters seems to be enormous. For all these reasons, digesters projects could help expose students to post-secondary education paths for occupations ranging from pipefitters to physicists. The Expo initiated the digester project after hearing Washington Governor Christine Gregoire express strong enthusiasm for anaerobic digesters during a panel discussion of alternative energy resources. The term was not known to us, but Google turned the trick and the search was on for a digester that could be built by students. That search eventually led to designs that are available through the Biogas program run by Paul Harris at the University of Adelaide in Australia (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/website/) and the Build It Solar site based in Bozeman, Montana, founded and operated by Gary Reysa, who moved to Montana after retiring from the Boeing Company in Seattle (www.builditsolar.com). Keliher and Judah volunteered to build the prototype to get a better handle on the safety issues before students become involved. Keliher has been a shop teacher for more than 30 years. Judah brings an unusual but indispensible qualification to the task. He used to work for a company that made farm equipment, with responsibility for manure management. Check back in the months ahead for updates on their project. A half dozen high schools around the state have expressed interest in also building digesters.
First, the digesters are green as green can be and learning about digesters is a great way to learn about a highly potent greenhouse gas and other aspects of environmental science. Second, they could be scaled and designed to promote learning in chemistry, electronics, metal fabricating, machining, control systems and electricity generation. Third, because of the potential hazards of methane, they would require rigorous safety programs that would require students to understand the properties of a gas that is colorless and odorless. 
Both sites are outstanding resources that will be highlighted in greater detail in future updates.
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"Green" is defined as just about anything related to energy, efficiency, alternatives to carbon-based fuels or other technological activities that reduce greenhouse emissions or benefit the environment in some other way. If you have a project or exhibit that would make a great addition to the Green Expo please contact Kevin Grayum at KevinGrayum@gmail.com.
