This morning was my presentation to Middle-Schoolers about electric vehicles.
When I arrived at the school, two 7th's graders greeted me, holding a hand-written sign saying "Ben" on it. They made me feel right at home, just like the airport...
After a brief tour of the parochial school, (lovely gymnasium...) I was brought to the 7th grade classroom.
The teacher greeted me while setting out chairs for the other two classes that were coming as I did my own A/V work, setting up my computer at the video projector connection, which was in the back of the room. Good thing I have a remote for my laptop...
The 6th and 8th graders came in as I was finishing up. Also present were three teachers and one adult friend of a teacher, who was generally interested in electric vehicles.
So, I began my presentation - lots of photos of the whole project, and me talking incessantly about about all the little details. Am I so out of it that I can't read the faces of some middle school kids? It seemed like I was loosing them.
That's when I announced that my car runs on farts.
Ok - that woke them up - now onto talking about renewable energy and how much of the electricity at my house is actually generated from methane gas (farts!) from landfills.
I also quizzed the kids on how they got to school. Walked? No hands raised. Biked? Nothing but blank faces. Got dropped off in an SUV?
Nearly every hand went up.
"What about the bus?" cried one.
It's a private school. I didn't even know if they had a bus! It might be a city bus for all I know.
"Bus?"
Four hands went up.
When the slide of the take 'n' bake pizza in the Metro, and then photos of the farmers market came up, I talked about how food and transportation are so tightly linked in this county. I asked the students to guess how far the average meal travels. One tack-sharp boy said - "The other side of the country". He was pretty close to dead-on. I wondered if any of the students had ever taken a road trip to California with their families. Surprisingly, four or five had. "Imagine if you had to drive there to get lunch every day, and breakfast, and dinner..."
I think they got the point.
When I got to the slide with the photo of me in front of the 15 MPH sign, I quickly looked over to the teacher. "Do you want me to talk about this too?"
She did, and I went into the story of how I was a bad boy and sped in my EV. Then that lead into talking about people who RACE electric vehicles. The students were inthralled with tales of the Killacycle and White Zombie.
I also commented about the Open Source Controller project, other EVs that were being built by people I know, and other exciting things going on RIGHT NOW by REGULAR PEOPLE.
Well now, I had used up my alloted half hour of talking and photos. None of the children had actually fallen asleep...
When I turned it over to questions, the crowd was suddenly an ocean of raised hands! They WERE paying attention!
It was another solid half hour of of answering questions from nearly every student. And these were good questions too! Not the usual perpetual-motion-machine comments, but actual, thought-out questions.
Although they didn't know the technical terms for it, the students asked about regenerative braking, series vs. parallel battery arrangement, motor efficiency, hybridization, and more.
Afterwards, I talked with the friend of the teacher for a while about clean transportation, sustainability, and related issues.
As a "thank you" for my coming out and presenting to the class, I was rewarded with a, get this, GAS STATION gift card. You decide if that's well suited or ironic. For me, it's the first time that I was a PAYED consultant!
After that, I headed off to pick up a used 72V battery charger of unknown condition. One of my electric car contacts told me that he had a charger returned to him for replacement. The charger may really have a problem with it, or it may have simply been misused. Either way, it has now been donated to my project for experimentation! I will crack that thing open when I get a chance and see what makes it tick. It's a different charger than I though it would be (it's NOT a fancy one....) but it may end up being a great charger to donate to a Citicar project, or it might work to help jack the Metro up to 72V! Like I said, time to experiment later.
When I stopped in to pick up the charger, I was well met by a beautiful metal sign in the window - an "official" EV charging station sign. It turns out that he had commissioned a small pile of these signs to be used by local businesses who agree to allow EVs to charge up in their parking lots.
I was informed of a food co-op (nice fancy little organic grocery store) that not only had TWO EV parking spaces, but was also the only business in town with a Photovoltaic array.
Of course I had to stop there on the way out of town...
The EV parking spaces were to the left of the main entrance farther away than the handicapped spaces, but still close enough to wish you drove an electric car, just so you could park there.
The charging jack itself was nothing more than a 20 amp Edison plug with GFI and a plastic cover. But what more than that do you need? That's exactly what's in my garage for charging my car, and I don't even have the plastic cover!
Besides the two signs and power jack, the lines for the parking spaces were GREEN instead of the traditional YELLOW!
I headed inside. It's a beautiful store. Lots of wonderful organic food, bulk items, and even a free library in the corner. I stopped at a rack of organic cotton T-shirts. A flirty baby-doll T exclaimed "Kiss Me! I'm Organic!".
I stopped at the service desk and said hello to a guy and gal who were manning it. I complemented them on the store and the EV charging/parking spaces.
Her: "Do you have an electric car?"
Do I?!
Ten minutes later, I was done yapping and left a note of keywords to web-search for later. (Ecomodder, Electro-Metro, big over-talkative nerd....)
Whoo, what a day!
I now have to add the electric charging station photos to my presentation for the local power utility tomorrow.
Gonna be a busy one...
-Ben