FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — In many nations around the world, vast numbers of people live in small huts with sheet metal or thatched vegetation for a roof. The only sources of indoor light are a door and window.
But four Memorial Park Middle School eighth-graders hope to change that. As members of The Bright Idea Team, they’ll try to convince judges of their project during the Christopher Columbus Awards national finals June 9-14 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
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Teams had to propose and study an idea that can help people in developing nations. Bright Idea team members Lily Weaver, 14; Jack Bixby, 14; Emily Zion, 13; and Tessa Hudelson, 14, studied whether “bottle lights” could be an option for providing low-cost, easily accessible indoor lighting for people living without electricity.
“Actually, it makes you feel like you are not just doing an eighth-grade science project,” Weaver told The News-Sentinel (http://bit.ly/16oYPjD ).
Bottle lights involve filling a clear, plastic soda pop bottle nearly full with water and adding a small amount of bleach to keep organisms from growing in the water, team members said.
You then cut a hole in the home’s roof that is just large enough to slide in the bottle snugly, team members said. You slide the bottle halfway into the hole in the roof, with the cap side facing up. You then apply sealer around the hole and bottle to hold the bottle in place and to prevent rain from dripping through the roof.
During daylight hours, sunlight enters the bottle and is refracted by the water, Bixby said. Indoors, that creates about the same amount of light as a 60-watt electric light bulb, said team coach Larry Lesh, a retired Memorial Park science teacher.
The team considered a few other ideas before deciding to study bottle lights, an idea suggested by Lesh’s son-in-law, Todd Butler of Fishers. Butler attends a church that makes missions trips to Nicaragua, where cheap indoor lighting is needed.
“It was the most interesting (idea),” Zion said.
They also had help from Tim Hamilton, an assistant professor in the engineering department at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Hamilton constructed a 5-foot-by-7-foot house in which the team could test various types of bottle lights.
Team members tested three key variables:
.Bottle size
.Amount of water in the bottle (full, three-quarters full or half full)
.Position of the bottle in the roof (one-quarter inside the house, half inside or three-quarters inside)
They compared the results of various bottle options to a control bottle, which was a 1-liter bottle filled with water and positioned halfway into the house.
Students used a light meter to measure the amount of light entering the house, Hudelson said.
Over about three months, they tested each bottle option three times and figured the percentage by which the light it emitted exceeded or fell below that of the control bottle.
They had predicted a 2-liter bottle full of water and placed three-quarters of the way inside the house would provide the most light. Their testing, however, showed the best design — at 209 percent better than the control bottle — is a clear plastic, 2-liter bottle that is full of water and placed halfway inside the home.
To be considered for Columbus Award judging, they had to submit a 10-page report on their study and findings in early February, Weaver said.
They learned April 11 their team had been selected one of 30 national semifinalists, Lesh said. Two weeks later, they found out they had been selected one of eight teams invited to the national finals.
Meanwhile, they have tried to share what they learned with developing nations via people from this area going on missions trips.
Team members were excited to hear Butler, to whom they sent bottle light instructions, helped arrange for three of them to be installed in a home during a mission trip to Nicaragua.
Lesh said a recent report from a church contact in Nicaragua said the family — two grandparents raising several grandchildren — likes the bottle lights because they don’t need to use electric lights during the day, saving them on their utility bill.
The team, however, has bigger goals:
If they win the Christopher Columbus contest, each team member would receive a $2,000 cash prize. But they really hope to win the $25,000 prize given to the team most likely to carry on their project for another year.
If they receive the $25,000, they hope to use some of the money to make prefabricated bottle light attachments, which would contain a piece of metal roofing with a pre-cut hole just the right size for a 2-liter bottle, a clear, plastic, 2-liter bottle; and sealer, Lesh said.
The bottle light roof attachments then could be sent with people going on mission trips, he said. Once those people arrive at their destinations, residents there only would have to cut a hole in their roof, set the bottle light roof attachment in place, add water and bleach, and seal around it.
Win or not, Bright Idea team members expect to have fun at the national finals: As part of being a national finalist, team members all receive a four-day, four-park pass to Disney theme parks.
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Information from: The News-Sentinel, http://www.news-sentinel.com/ns
This is an AP Member Exchange shared by The News-Sentinel.
