Students Explore Possibilities of a Greener Future

[Herb Fellow]

About 140 teams of students participated in WSU’s “Imagine Tomorrow” on Saturday. The competition asked high school students to create new solutions for the world’s growing energy crisis. Teams presented their energy solutions in Bohler Gymnasium and were judged throughout the day. The competition was open to all Washington high school students. The awards ranged from $1,500 to the grand prize of $5,000 and were given separately to the team and to their school.

Wapato High School sophomores Kirsten Cleveringa, 16, and Jessica Camacho, 16, wanted to make their high school more energy efficient for their project called “Wapato Design Challenge.” “We began by looking at our budget and to see how much the community had,” Cleveringa said. “Since we came from a mostly lower- to middle-income community we decided we couldn’t completely re-do the school but that we could try cut down energy usage from the school.” The team, which also included Jaylene Gomez and Jose Carmona, decided it would save energy by remodeling the school with motion sensor lights and toilets. Camacho said their original toilets are outdated and use more water, but motion sensor toilets would cut down on the large sums of water being used.

“The project took a lot of time, but we learned a lot,” Camacho said. “Even when we were videotaping there were lights in the hallway that were on all day that didn’t need to be. We never noticed these lights before.” Cleveringa said they realized they needed to stick with things that could be accomplished for their project.

Wapato Design Challenge stuck to the basics but other groups broadened their horizons for a more massive global change. Ballard High School sophomores Nicole Reams, 16, Loey May Engel, 15, and Maxwell Miner, 16, controversially did their project on the hemp plant as a means for a more energy-efficient world.

Their project, “Hemp: The Superplant” used research about the plant to prove its energy-efficient chemicals and uses. Reams said hemp is very different from the marijuana plant, which contains 15 percent THC (the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) levels, while hemp contains .3 percent. “You can use it as fuel, you can build a house with its fibers and it’s more sustainable, flexible and longer lasting them wood products,” Reams said.

Miner said hemp fibers are the strongest in the world next to spider silk and hemp plants can grow up to 25 feet in 120 days, reducing the amount of forests being cut down. Hemp paper can also be recycled seven times compared to regular wood-made paper which can be recycled only three times, Miner said. Hemp fibers are also more flexible meaning houses made out of them are much safer in in earthquake zones, Engel said.

“This is also true with cars,” Engel said. “Mercedes and BMW have made car exteriors and interiors out of hemp and car-tested them. The car exterior made out of hemp could withstand the impact 10 times better then a regular car exterior. This could save lives” Miner said the United States is the only industrialized country that has made the hemp plant illegal and does not use it in their crop growth.

Jackson High School students, Alysha Kha, 17, junior, and sophomore Daphine Wei, 15 originally thought about using the heat from cooking and watching TV to generate heat back into the house. “Then we took it to a different level using the solar tree,” Wei said. The solar tree, designed by Ross Lovegrove, a British designer, can provide up to four days of electricity without direct sunlight, Kha said. “They have LED light emissions, which cut down carbon emissions and also there is a sensor in the solar tree that can sense how much a light is being directed into the earth and the trees turn on and off by that,” Kha said. This project also included the ideas of forced air heaters and the thermal barrier fabrics that could produce a perfect solar energy house.

John ‘Skip’ Paznokas, dean for the Integrated Sciences and Outreach in the College of Science, said there were a couple very interesting projects that captured his eye. “There was one project that was looking at ways of generating energy from household water waste,” said Paznokas, who was a judge for the competition. “So, taking a shower, washing your clothes, they have a system that they are thinking about for generating some energy from that water.” Paznokas said there were a lot of projects that applied with things like composting and looking at renewable resources.

“There are a lot of different types of projects here and they all have different elements to it and they are working together as teams,” Paznokas said. “One of the things I like most is that they are working together as a team to try and solve the problem. They also talk about how hard that is and sometimes they have to spend a lot of time just making decisions, which is really what teamwork is all about.”

Source: The Daily Evergreen
Copyright: 2008, The Daily Evergreen
Contact: Megan Salisbury
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