This week the Enviro Avengers had a visit from Avana and Oscar who are health engineers at Fisher and Paykel. They came in today and started teaching us about solar panels and how they work. We learned that solar panels are made out of multiple cells that generate electricity, the cells act like plants where they extract power from the sun to create energy. We had multiple discussions about the types of energies like kinetic energy and potential energy. After, we split into 2 groups and they showed us how the solar panels would work, they attached alligator clips into a small lightbulb and connected those wires back into the solar panel and then put it into sunlight, powering the light bulb. Most of us were amazed because we don’t really see how electronics works, we mostly see an on and off switch instead of a power source, though there wasn’t anything to store the power so it stopped glowing when we took it out of the sunlight.

After Avana and Oscar showed us their absurd lemon power generator that used five lemons to power a single LED, we were all in awe of this machine since we never knew that this could even be made. Oscar explained that the zinc covered screw would cause a chemical reaction between the acidic lemon and the zinc which will generate electricity into the screw, then a copper wire would conduct that electricity into a LED which would eventually power it with enough lemons.

Oscar then gave us some lemons and a copper wire and some zinc covered nails and he told us to make what he made. After making it we attached the lemons together and plugged it into a LED and to all of our surprise it lit up, After some more questions from The Enviro Avengers Oscar and Avana eventually left.

   

After lunch we started researching things like batteries and how solar panels work. We all learned a lot this week and we are looking forward to future sessions.