Week 2 in Eco Energy- Our Trip to the Electric Bike Shop and Charging Station

Our first outing was down the electric bike shop in St Martins and then onto the EV charging station.
Pete (Leroy's dad) spoke to us about his biking passion and the problem of living on a hill and having to cycle up it with his children. So he built an electric bike. We learnt about how an electric bike maximises your effort when you ride. For 1km of effort walking your can bike 8km. These bikes are of course better for the environment- althought it takes the same carbon footprint to make an ordinary bike a it does a regular bike. Lots of the adults wanted to get one!

S'Mart Tank Update

This morning we made great progress towards our readiness to pitch to our mentors in a few weeks.

We have a couple of prototypes all ready to go - a ski bike that Lennox has created at home, as well as a kitchen herb garden. Google forms have been sent to survey potential customers about costs, ads have begun to be created, slide shows are nearly complete!

We watched a couple of videos on tech inventions.

I am hugely impressed by the work that some of the groups have taken on in their own time.

Energised by Electricity

It was all go in the Eco Energy Group on Thursday morning!  We learnt more about electrical circuits - loads, components, electron and how we can create our own electricity even!  We had Tim and Moby explain a few concepts before we had hands-on activities to explore for ourselves.   These were creating static electricity, making a circuit board with foil and wires, fruit and veggie powered circuits with readings from a multi-meter, electro-magnets and using our circuit kits again.

Comment below, tamariki, about one thing you learnt about electricity last week.

NEXT WEEK:  We are off on our walk to The Christchurch Electric Bike Shop near New World and also checking out the electric charging station on the other side.   Remember to bring your fleece.

Alison For S'Mart Tank

This morning we were lucky enough to have Alison, Evelyn's mum, talking to us about the Design Process. She was great at keeping us on track with our ideas.

We had to answer the following questions in our groups.

What does it do?

How does it do it?

How is it similar to other designs?

What makes it different from other designs?

What does it look like?

How is it made?

What could go wrong, and what preventions are in place?

We now have a short time frame to be ready to pitch our ideas to our mentors in Week 6. Some groups are flying ahead with their prototypes.