Week Five

Office of Sustainability- Sally DeLeon and Samantha Bennett, from the UMD Office of Sustainability, came to talk to the children about comparing energy sources on campus and how some are renewable. Bennett told the campers about the three "P's", planet, people, and pocketbook. "That is what sustainability is all about," she said.

The children then made a chart of how they could use energy more thoughtfully, like riding bikes and shutting the refrigerator door.

Ms. Bennet showed the children an efficient smart strip that turns off certain electronics when their counterpart is turned off, like a printer when the computer is turned off. DeLeon brought in a green electric block snap circuit kit to demonstrate wind, solar, and water energy. Children enjoyed running water on the water wheel and blowing on the turbine to see how many volts of energy were created. During quiet time, campers wrote thank you notes to show their appreciation for the presentation.

The next day everyone traced their own foot on recycled paper and made a "small footprint pledge" in honor of the Office's program.

Physicists-Two UMD physicists, that are also CYC moms, came into the Blue Room with experiments for the campers involving balloons and ice cream. Dr. Chandra Turpen, Research Assistant Professor, and Dr. Emily Edwards, director of communications and outreach at the UMD JointQuantum Institute, brought out a balloon and asked the children to think about what happens when you blow a balloon up, is it hard or easy? She was able to get the children to think about the force it takes to push the air into the balloon. Dr. Turpen then had the children dunk the balloons into a cooler of ice water to see what would happen.

She talked to them about how the air molecules inside would move closer together and the children predicted the balloons would shrink. The balloons did get slightly smaller with the ice water but then Dr. Edwards brought out some liquid nitrogen, poured that into a small cooler and forced a balloon into the cooler, she did this with five balloons and everyone watched as the balloons collapsed and flattened into the cooler. Condensation poured over the table in an eerie smoky looking fashion that astonished the children. Amazingly, when Dr. Edwards pulled the balloons out, they reverted to their original size!

For the final piece of their presentation, Dr. Edwards mixed the ingredients for ice cream into a bowl and while she poured liquid nitrogen into the bowl, Dr. Turpen stirred and made what the children considered the best ice cream ever!

SCUB (Satellite Central Utility Building)- Chauncy Jenkins, UMD facilities operations manager, came into the Blue Room to explain how the swimming pool, the children swim in each day, is supplied with power. Mr. Jenkins brought some slides of the SCUB that showed a compressor, heat exchanger, motor control center, chiller, and other pipes and towers. He asked the children about temperatures; that of their body on the inside and the outside. He explained for the pool water to be comfortable it needed to be warmed. Mr. Jenkins said he was sorry he could not take the children into the SCUB but that he was concerned for their safety and the children did not complain, "I enjoyed the pictures", wrote one child in a thank you note to Mr. Jenkins.

The Electritian

- A spouse of a CYC teacher, Thomas Anstine, happened to be an electritian. He kindly offered to come and answer questions about electricity for the children. After briefly explaining how electricity gets into a house from a power plant, he sat down with the campers and helped them create different circuits using an electric block building set, similar to the one DeLeon brought in to show renewable energy with. Together Mr. Anstine and the children built a piano, light switch, buzzer, and a simple radio. Anstine also stayed long enough to help the children disassemble some broken CD player, exposing the control boards.