Eighth graders Megan Harmon and Noah Rainer’s project “Harvesting the Sun” took home the Colorado EnergyWise Award for $250 as well as a $50 prize from Lockheed Martin.
The project was essentially a solar-powered charging station that the students created from $12 worth of materials, including a peltier tile, an aluminum plate and a heat tank as key ingredients.
It took Rainer and her partner a month to build, and the result was surprisingly efficient and powerful.
“It’s smaller, it cost less and produced more energy, and took up less space,” said Rainer. “It only cost $12 dollars, produced 45 volts, and is able to completely charge a Galaxy 5 in under an hour.”
Eighth-grader Kale Hall’s project, “Put Me In, Coach” studied the effect of different coaching styles-- positive, negative or constructive-- on game players.
Using the board-game Perfection and 15 test subjects, Hall devised a schema that randomly assigned a style to a different player and he recorded their performance and personal preference.
“I got the idea from watching coaches and players, since I play with a traveling summer team for basketball,” said Hall. “I found that there wasn’t really a pattern, each person has their own preference, I had one classmate that actually preferred negative, but a lot preferred constructive and positive.”
The students say competing on at the state-level was a bit nerve-wracking at first, but a memory that will stick with them.
“It was a really neat experience to have at my age,” said Hall.