IESRE has received a $14,400 grant from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection for professional development workshops about solar energy. These grants are funded from fines collected by Pennsylvania as a result of environmental violations. PECO Energy, a major energy supplier in Pennsylvania, has agreed to provide an additional $3,000 for the project. IESRE will conduct this project in collaboration with the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and Green Woods Charter School, both in Philadelphia. SCEE will host the workshops and a science teacher from Green Woods will help the project develop strategies for assessing student work on these kinds of hands-on activities. Participants will learn about solar cells, build simple solar-powered car kits, and build pyranometers -- instruments for monitoring solar energy available at Earth's surface. All activities will be keyed to Pennsylvania's Environment and Ecology and Science and Technology education standards.
David Brooks at the Asia-Pacific GLOBE Learning Expedition, Hua Hin, Thailand, 13-18 November, 2007
In November, David Brooks attended the Asia-Pacific GLOBE Learning Expedition in Hua Hin, Thailand, sponsored by the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST), which manages the GLOBE program in Thailand, and with travel support from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. He gave a special presentation on student climate change research, and conducted student/teacher workshops on building small solar-powered cars and pyranometers -- instruments for measuring solar energy at Earth's surface.
In August 2007, as part of the 2007 MSP program, David Brooks presented a two-day workshop on solar power and energy concepts for Philadelphia school districts from grades 5 through 12. The 30 participants examined the operation of solar cells, including the relationships among current, voltage, and power, and built pyranometers and small solar cell-powered cars. Nearly all participants had never built anything requiring the use of a soldering iron, so this proved to be a valuable experience. The solar powered cars were especially popular, with lively discussions of how to fix problems (for example, when the car ran backwards) and improve performance that will translate to many "teachable moments" in the classroom.
During the summer of 2007, two IESRE pyranometers were calibrated as part of the Broadband Outdoor Calibration (BORCAL) Project at NREL's Solar Radiation Research Branch in Golden, Colorado. This event, conducted at NREL's internationally recognized solar research facility, provides detailed calibrations for a variety of research and commercial instruments and is an essential activity for ensuring the worldwide reliability of solar measurements. As a result of this project, IESRE's pyranometers, in the center of the image at the right, were shown to perform about the same as commercial solar cell-based pyranometers costing at least twenty times more. A complete database of all BORCAL calibration results is available online at http://www.nrel.gov/aim/. These data allow the use, under certain sky conditions, of solar zenith angle-dependent calibrations that greatly increase the accuracy of insolation measurements.
A complete kit of parts for building a silicon solar cell-based pyranometer, identical in principle to commercial pyranometers for agricultural and environmental monitoring, is available for US$20, including shipping in the United States (check or money order only) from:
Institute for Earth Science Research and Education
2686 Overhill Drive
Norristown, PA 19403 USA
Complete instructions for building the pyranometer can be found here. You will also need a 12-bit data logger to record data from your pyranometer, such as the U12-006 or U12-013 USB loggers from Onset Computer Corporation.
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| Working with KMITL and IPST in Thailand, April 2007 In April, 2007, David Brooks made the first of three trips to Thailand as a Visiting Scholar at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. This position at one of Thailand's leading engineering universities is sponsored by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Dr. Brooks is also working with KMITL and Thailand's Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST). Currently, IPST is planning a southeast Asia regional teacher workshop to prepare for the GLOBE Program's GLOBE Learning Expedition to be held in South Africa in early 2008, which Dr. Brooks will attend in November. The image in the center is from the Grand Palace in Bangkok. | ||||
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| Sun photometers for the GLOBE Program Following the abandonment of direct support for all atmosphere protocols by the GLOBE Program in 2006, IESRE continues to provide assembled and calibrated sun photometers, as well as kits, for use by students and teachers in the GLOBE Program and elsewhere. Hundreds of these sun photometers are in use around the world and student measurements are being presented in a growing body of work, including refereed papers appearing in the peer-reviewed science literature. |  |
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| Atmosphere Measurements Workshop for GLOBE/Trinidad & Tobago, December 2005 In December, 2005, David Brooks traveled to Trinidad as a guest of the GLOBE Program in Trinidad and Tobago. He participated in two teacher training workshops, held on the larger of the two main islands that comprise the southernmost country in the Caribbean island chain. Dr. Brooks is providing GLOBE sun photometers for schools in Trinidad and Tobago, as part of a major expansion of this country's GLOBE program. The left photo shows a double rainbow near a workshop site. The right photo shows Dr. Brooks and some of the workshop participants, along with Mr. Henry Saunders, the Ministry of Education's GLOBE Coordinator in Trinidad and Tobago. The workshops were sponsored by Petrotrin, Trinidad and Tobago's government-owned petroleum company, and BGT&T, British Gas Trinidad and Tobago. |
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