When we visited the Museum of Science a while ago, I saw a few interesting things that we could use for our project.
The coolest thing I saw that we could probably have done was in the sustainable energy exibit. It was a demonstration on the placement of solar pannels on a house and how it affected the amount of power they generated as the day goes by. The demonstration had a small model house with four possible positions to place the pannels. The solar pannels were in a case that could be placed on any of the four positions and would stick there using magnets. To simulate the sun’s changing position during the day, there were three lights, one for morning noon and night, above the house at different angles for the different times. When the pannel was placed and a light was turned on, a meter read the voltage produced by the pannel. The purpose of the exibit was to try the four different positions for each time of day and find out which produced the most electricity over the course of the day. I thought this was a really cool idea for a demonstration to show where solar panels should be placed for the best efficiency over the course of the day.
I think this would not be to difficult to demonstrate for the highschoolers. The house could be made out of legos from the NXT sets, as could a rigging to hold a flashlight. The power produced by the solar pannels could be measured by the NXT.