That is really astounding that it takes so much human energy to produce so little electricity! Were you all surprised by this? Does this make you think differently about things like leaving a light on in an empty room?
- Emma Freyermuth
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- F=I3
- Madison M
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- F=I3
- Meagan M
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- F=I3
- Sarah M
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- F=I3
- Sophia S
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- F=I3
Judges’ Queries and Presenter’s Replies
Presentation Discussion
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Further posting is closed as the event has ended.
Susan Leschine
Professor
Hello Emma, Sarah, Madison, Meegan, and Sophia, Interesting idea! Too bad your small crank generator wasn’t more efficient… You may not know the answer to my question, and that’s ok. I’m wondering, do you know, are there any commercially available devices that run on crank generators? I have a crank radio, but I do not know how it works!
Emma Freyermuth
After our small hand generator broke, we purchased a another generator, featured in the video, at our local Walmart.
Brian Drayton
Co-Director
Hi, team!
I really appreciate your careful report of “negative results” — that’s very important for science, and not done as often as it should be.
Did you consider pedal-driven generators (longer stroke, maybe could combine with exercise equipment)?
Emma Freyermuth
We only wished we had more time. Towards the end of the experiment time, we thought it would be a interesting activity to hook it up to a stationary bike. We think we could generate more electricity this way.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
I agree with Brian, negative results are important. Could you talk a bit about how you might engineer the generator you made yourselves to improve its efficiency?
Emma Freyermuth
We were disappointed that we could not get our generator to run. We wish we could have spoken to an electrician about improving our generator and the amount of electricity it produced.
Sara Lacy
Senior Scientist
A shake cell phone is very appealing idea. I wonder if you have some ideas about how to find out if this is possible. Do you know how much more energy a cell phone needs than a flashlight? How much more shaking would that be?
Emma Freyermuth
In our research, we couldn’t find any specific information about this, but we did find that cellphones uses a very small amount of electricity to charge, so we thought the flashlight and cellphone used about the same amount of electricity.
Emma Freyermuth
Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment on our video.