Smithtown High School West has been awarded a 2011 MIT-InvenTeam Grant. InvenTeams are teams of high school students, teachers and mentors that receive grants of up to $10,000 each to invent technological solutions to real-world problems. The students at West are working to design an efficient affordable solar panel system that will allow people living in the developing world to have the energy needed for night-time lighting and charging cell phones. The team has determined the size solar panel that would be needed to meet these goals at the lowest possible cost. Their innovation is to couple the panel with a solar tracker that will maximize the exposure of the panel to direct sunlight. This important and novel design will be essential for the system’s efficacy during the rainy season.

 

The motivation for this work has come from their desire to help people living in a small community in Northern Nicaragua that has no access to affordable energy. Students at High School West have been working and communicating with students in a high school there for the last year. The device will be field tested during February Break when teachers from West will travel to Nicaragua to work on projects and conduct workshops.

 

The Smithtown West team is consists of: Paige Buzard, Sarah Cacciabaudo, Allie Cohen, Daniel Cykman, Michael Emerson, Ryan Gruber, Eric Guleksen, Tyler Lawrence, Emily Mancini, Neema Patel, Amy Sullivan and Tyler TerBush.

 

A number of teachers are working with the students to help them solve problems and apply lessons from science, technology and math in order to achieve their goals. The team is led by Dr. Joanne Figueiredo, the Science Research Coordinator at West. In addition, Gillian Winters (physics), Craig Boehner (technology), and Regina Fisher (math) have worked to ensure the success of the team.