Hello Woodlawn Wildcats!

Here is a shout out to the Woodlawn students from American Museum of Natural History astrophysicists from around the world!

Cosmic Rays

How do you collect sunlight?  What can affect how much solar energy hits the Earth?  How can we save the energy from the sun?  These are questions that our 3rd and 4th graders asked as they collected data about our sun.  Using solar energy meters the 3rd graders predicted the best angle to collect the most watts/m2 and then set up an experiment to track the temperature and solar energy at a location for a week.  They found that temperature was a good prediction of how much energy they could collect from the sun but that clouds and pollution may affect how much radiation reaches the Earth's surface.

HOBO data logger graph - blue is temperature, black is volts

The 4th graders learned how to connect a circuit to use solar energy to charge a AA or AAA battery.  They made predictions on how long it would take to fill a rechargeable battery and collected data with a multimeter every 10 minutes over an hour.  It was a science/recess lesson!

Solar battery circuits chargers while the students played

Checking the connections after collecting data