Service Learning

For most American teenagers, summer vacation is a time to make some pocket money, go to the beach, and hang out with friends. But, for twenty high school students from DaVinci Charter Academy in Davis, CA., summer vacation meant a trip to Nicaragua to share their pedal-powered blender.

The idea for the blender was proposed during a visit from the director of Grupo Fenix, a Nicaraguan organization dedicated to the research, development, and application of renewable energy technologies in Nicaragua. The opportunity to engage students in using physics to solve real-world problems and get them thinking about how different cultures capture and use energy, were the perfect ingredients for a physics project!Read more...