Below is a copy of our Handout and Powerpoint:
The first school we had the opportunity of conducting our experiments with was the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science. We arrived a few minutes early so we decided to hang out in the main office. 15 minutes later we were indirectly “kicked out” of the office when the secretary told us we had to quite down in order for her to complete payroll assignments. I agreed, to take the group to Mr. Muller’s classroom. We arrived at the engineering lab classroom and proceeded in getting our entire equipment ready and mentally ready for presenting in front of high school students. As time passed, more students started arriving and in no time the room was packed with approximately 30 students. My group presented first since our PowerPoint was already loaded on the computer. The presentation went amazingly great! Students were very engaged and respectful during our presentation. I was also surprised with the critical questions they were able to construct when they were asked if they had any questions. When we did the experiment, we took 3 groups since we had 3 solar panels to conduct the experiment with. 2 of the groups got reasonable data, which was similar to our own data points. Unfortunately, in the last group one of the students thought it would be smart to place a resistor we provided to them in the water. As a result of having a faulty resistor, their data was scattered and nothing could be concluded. We gave them another resistor to conduct the experiment with and then they noticed more reasonable data. At the end, we did a quick experiment with the theatre light with different color filters on the solar panel. To conclude, it was very enjoyable experience and ended up more fun then what we anticipated.
On the second day, we went to Charleston High School. Although, my group was not presenting I decided to come and help Bobby who was going to present. Due to the close proximity of the school, some of us decided to walk the 2-mile trip. When we arrived, we were baffled by the lack of students in the classroom. When we walked inside the classroom, there were only about 4 students. Bobby presented first, and then shortly after Dr. Shatz decided it would be more beneficial if we just set up small experiment stations and allowed the 4 students to walk around and learn close up what each experiment was proving. The few students their were, walked around asked questions on the experiments and even college related questions and we more than happy to answer them. Overall, this day was slightly slow due to the lack of students. If we would have had a full classroom the experience at this specific school could have been better.
On the last day of presentations, we presented in front of the students of Boston Community Leader Academy (BCLA). We presented in the library, which forced all of us to talk very loudly inside the library. I think we probably had the biggest group of students at this high school with about 35-40 students listening to our presentations. Before we began presenting our experiments, we all decided to answer college related questions first. Amazingly, the students had many interesting questions about college. Some of them were concerned that they didn’t know what they wanted to study but we reassured all the students that will eventually find subjects that they find great interest in. In addition, most (if not all) students were freshman, so they have a few years ahead of them to decide what their studies will focus on. We presented our PowerPoint and answered questions at the same time to get the most out of our time. Some of the students struggled with some of the material since some of them have not been exposed to physics yet since they were freshmen. At the end, we had a few minutes left so we decided that it would be better to set up the experiments and just demo them to the students. We set two experiments one solar panel was clear and another one was covered with dirt. We placed both NXTs next to each other and told students to observe the difference in voltage between both solar panels. To conclude, I think this group had the best energy out of all the schools. There were many instances that we would all laugh because some of the things that they would say and ask were hilarious. Overall, this school was very fun to present to and I enjoyed it a lot.
The experience of presenting our experiments to high students was extremely valuable. We had an opportunity to enhance our public speaking skills and also gave us the chance to create an experiment from scratch, which is quite a challenge.