Learning alongside the middle school

Today was another amazing day, working with the HOI middle school as well as doing a survey for a future solar project with a local family's home. We started out the day with breakfast from our wonderful cooks here, sausage, eggs, and beans before heading over to the medical clinic for a quick tour of the facility at the ranch. HOI has a medical program that includes one main clinic with a full staff, then four separate smaller facilities with a nurse each. We met with the staff, and were given a rundown on the services there.

After our tour of the clinic, we loaded up into the van and drove the mile down the road to the middle school, which is straight across from the elementary. We taught the 7th graders today about water pressure, and gave them an activity with water-powered boats. After having them complete the boats, we took them out and raced them. We recorded times, then took them to the school’s computer lab and had them work in excel to find average velocities. Finally, Hope gave a presentation on how solar panels work, and had the students do an analysis on how many panels would be needed to power the school.

This worked perfectly for our first group of seventh graders, but during our time in the computer lab for the second group, the power went out, and caused two of the computers in the lab to start smoking from a power surge. We got the kids out and unplugged all the computers before taking them over to their library. We decided to fall back on our activity from the day before, index card towers, and the rest of the school day was thankfully uneventful.

We had lunch after our second group of 7th graders back at the ranch, then headed out again to survey the house of the ranch’s cooks. We counted lights and outlets and recorded them so that we can come back for future trips and possibly install a solar power system.

The rest of the afternoon was nice and relaxing, since the ranch has backup generators to supplement during power outages, and the team was glad to get some rest. Seth, Dr.Gwinn, and Hope will be leaving tomorrow to speak with Predisan, so we will be working apart for the next two days. Come back tomorrow, as both groups will be posting their stories!