This past fall the Harker InvenTeam group earned a $9,110 grant which has now led to further research and development on an aquatic thermoelectric generator. The already twice-showcased device could go on to become a common sight, floating around backyard swimming pools.
The InvenTeam is run by the Lemelson-MIT Program and awards grants to teams of inventive high school students with the goal of turning their visions into reality. The Harker team developed a solar generator that uses swimming pools, or other bodies of water, as a potential new alternative and cheaper source of green electricity. Designed to power schools, homes and businesses, the device utilizes the power of thermoelectric panels capable of harnessing the temperature difference between a hot surface and cold water. Potentially, huge floating generators might someday create enough electricity to move beyond neighborhood swimming pools and help power entire coastal regions.
The groundbreaking generator was designed by Prag Batra, grade 12, and his team: Sachin Jain and Jay Reddy, both grade 12; Ramakrishnan Menon, Wilbur Yang and Shantanu Joshi, all grade 11; and grade 10 students Nikhil Dilip and Pranav Batra.
Anthony Silk, upper school math teacher and the team’s advisor, explained that as this device floats on water, reflector panels focus sunlight onto a black surface converting the solar energy to heat. The heat is then passed through thermoelectric panels and passively dissipated into the surrounding water.
A few weeks ago, Harker and the Lemelson-MIT Program jointly sponsored a special evening presentation of the InvenTeam’s project. Held at the Nichols Hall auditorium, the event was attended by Harker families, administrators and board members. Following the InvenTeam’s presentation, special guest Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, spoke on the importance of creating an ecosystem for young inventors in Northern California.
Most recently, the students represented one of 14 student teams participating in the Open Minds exhibition run by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. They had received an invitation to do so from the NCIIA and Lemelson-MIT Program.
“I found the Open Minds event to be amazing. Our Harker students got to showcase their invention alongside some of the top college teams in the country,” said Silk. “They spent the evening answering tough questions from scientists, inventors and investors who all seemed extremely enthusiastic by the work done so far. It was also great preparation for EurekaFest, which will happen this summer at MIT, where the students will be presenting their project along with the other 15 high school teams from around the country,” he added, noting that a finished product should be ready by the time of the EurekaFest in June. The team is being sponsored by Lenyard Food Service for the trip to EurekaFest.
Upon receiving the initial grant award, Batra said possible applications for the generator were numerous. “For instance, the device could be used on almost any body of water and could be incorporated into future boats to provide renewable, portable power at sea,” he had said, noting that in the process, the device would help reduce reliance on nonrenewable energy sources such as fossil fuels and provide clean energy without negative environmental impacts such as air or water pollution.
Now, with the developing project generating so much early interest and excitement, it appears that Batra and his team have created a potentially marketable product!
The last week of February was a big one for Harker STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students, as various upper school clubs organized special science-themed events on the upper school campus for each day of the week. On Monday, members of the school’s various STEM-related clubs handed out fun crossword puzzles with science-themed clues for their fellow students to solve. The robotics team staged an indoor cart race on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the WiSTEM fair showcased a variety of scientific phenomena, such as a bubble machine and the use of liquid nitrogen to freeze various objects.
On Thursday, the Harker chapter of the Interscholastic Gaming League displayed a range of gaming platforms from the past several decades, from Atari to the Xbox 360. Finally, on Friday, the Chemistry Club showed off some of the neat “magic tricks” that are possible with chemistry, including marble sculpting, an explosive hydrogen balloon and the famous Briggs-Rauscher color oscillation reaction, in which a variety of chemicals are combined to create a visually striking series of color changes.
On Sat., March 24, Harker will host the seventh annual conference for Silicon Valley Computer-Using Educators (SVCUE), titled “T3: Teach Through Technology.” The conference will contain a variety of presenters and workshops designed to help teachers integrate technology to enhance the classroom experience.
As many as 200 teachers and administrators have attended previous conferences. Last year, Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher, showed off Scratch, a new open-source programming language for children and teenagers, and Paul Vallerga, a teacher and designer in Harker’s performing arts department, demonstrated Google SketchUp, a free 3-D modeling tool, for student art projects, demonstrations and more.
This year, demonstrations will include how to use Google apps to reduce email clutter, the benefits of utilizing iPads as teaching tools, strategies to involve disengaged students and using video to enhance instruction. Vendors exhibiting at the event include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education, Krause Center for Innovation and more.
A program with a full list of presentations and exhibitors is available for download at the SVCUE event page. Attendees can register at the registration page on the Harker website.
In late March, Paulomi Bhattacharya, Apurva Tandon and Emily Chu, all grade 11, Monica Kumaran, grade 10, and Ayush Midha, grade 9, will travel with science department chair Anita Chetty and upper school biology teacher Gary Blickenstaff to Cambridge University for the first Triple Helix Science in Society Conference.
The conference is held by the Cambridge Chapter of The Triple Helix, a nonprofit organization that publishes scientific articles by university students from all over the world. Harker is the first, and so far only, high school chapter for the organization, and will be the only U.S. high school represented at the conference. The students and teachers will be attending the conference, which takes place April 5, with students from other U.K. private schools, and will have the chance to attend a panel debate, prepare posters to present their own research and more.
Harker third graders enjoyed a memorable field trip Jan. 13, spending the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. First on the agenda was attending the Ocean Explorers program, “Sharks: The Real Story.” The program, held in the aquarium’s gymnasium, helped focus the students for their visit with behind-the-scenes footage and “inside stories” from the deep seas.
After the presentation, the student groups were free to explore the aquarium on their own, and they took full advantage, enjoying the splash zone, jellyfish, touch pools, puffins and kelp forest. Jeannette Bhatia, grade 3 science instructor, said, “The children had a fantastic time with some of their favorite exhibits being the penguins and seahorses.” What an exciting, aquatic adventure!
January 15, 2012:
Several news outlets have published or broacast stories on the 29 Bay Area Intel Science Talent Search semi-finalists:
The UC Santa Cruz Astronomy and Astrophysics web page has a story noting four semi-finalists, including three Harker students worked on their projects while part of the UC Santa Cruz Science Internship Program.
January 11, 2012:
For the second year in a row, Harker broke the record for Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists in California, when 11 students, all of them in grade 12, were named at a morning assembly on Jan. 11. Prag Batra, Lucy Cheng, Nicole Dalal, Govinda Dasu, Michelle Deng, Vishesh Gupta, Revanth Kosaraju, Ramya Rangan, Pavitra Rengarajan, Kathryn Siegel and Albert Wu all received a $1,000 prize for the projects they submitted to the contest. This year’s competition had 1,839 entrants from nearly 500 high schools in 44 states, the District of Columbia and overseas. Of those, 300 students were selected as semifinalists. Only one school had more semifinalists than Harker in the entire country.
Last year, Harker broke the record for California with seven semifinalists, two of whom, Nikhil Parthasarathy ’11 and Rohan Mahajan ’11, were named finalists, making Harker the only school in the nation to produce two Intel finalists.
On Jan. 25, 40 finalists will be chosen to go to Washington, D.C. in March to compete for more than $1.25 million in awards from the Intel Foundation.
The students’ projects are as follows:
“Donor and Epitope Specific Variations in Immune Gene Expression in CMV Dextramer Positive CD8 T Cells,” by Nicole Dalal
“De Novo Splice From Discovery from RNA-Seq Data,” by Ramya Rangan
“Detailed Chemical Abundance Patterns of Andromeda Dwarf Satellites from Cadded Spectra,” by Lucy Cheng
“An Ontological Bayesian Framework for Context-Specific Navigation and Discovery of Biomedical Knowledge,” by Michelle Deng
“Determining the Genetic Target of Drugs Using a Synthetic Lethality Map,” by Kathryn Siegel
“Neuroanatomical and Cell Population Abnormalities Found in Mouse Model for Human Chromosome,” by Pavitra Rengaragan
“Role of Epidermal Hif-1 ALPHA in the Inflammatory and Angiogenic Response to Ischemia in Diabetic Wound Healing,” by Revanth Kosaraju
“Storage of Active Biological Compounds in Silk Films,” by Prag Batra
“Discovery of 16 Nearby Brown Dwarf Candidates in WISE Preliminary Release Data,” by Govinda Dasu
“Multi-net Bayesian Networks for Integrative Genomic Discovery: Application to the Epistatic Interactions for HIV,” by Albert Wu
“Use of Discretization Approach in Autonomous Control of an Active Extrados/Intrados Camber Morphing Wing,” by Vishesh Gupta
The following is excerpted from the story “New Features Around Campus,” which appears in the Aug. 26 edition of The Winged Post.
The science department has sponsored installation of an aquarium that features many species of tropical fish, coral and other invertebrates, and live rock from Fiji taken from an actual coral reef.
Science department chair and biology teacher Anita Chetty wanted to invite students to the atrium, rather than just have them pass through to class.
“I wanted to enhance the atrium and give it life,” Chetty said.
Funding for the installation came from the prize money won by last year’s seven Intel semifinalists.
On Dec. 13, Harker students and InvenTeam members Prag Batra, Arihant Jain, Sachin Jain and Jay Reddy, all grade 12, visited San Jose City Hall, where they and the other members of the team were recognized for their achievement in this year’s InvenTeam initiative by being awarded a commendation from the city. The team’s project is a special generator that can harness solar power without the need for pricey solar panels. In October, the team was awarded a grant of $9,110 to see their project to completion. Impressed with the students’ accomplishment, City Councilman Pete Constant invited them and advisor Anthony Silk, upper school math teacher, to be honored at a city the Dec. 13 council meeting, where the students and Silk met Constant and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed.
Congratulations to The Harker School robotics team, who won two awards at the Western Region Robotics Forum’s (WRRF) CalGames competition, held at Archbishop Mitty High School in late October.
The team was awarded the BAE Systems Design Award for their “Ebox” modular electronic control hardware. “The Ebox is a single unit that contains all of the electronics needed to run the robot and a standardized set of connectors to interface with external motors and sensors,” said team member Jay Reddy, grade 12. “That way, we always have multiple functioning robots in the lab. We simply plug the Ebox into whichever robot we want to run.”
Additionally, team mentor Eric Nelson, upper school physics teacher, received the WRRF Mentor of the Year award for his longtime dedication to the team. The winner of this award is determined by student essays and interviews conducted on his or her behalf. “The team is very excited since Dr. Nelson is a great mentor and we are glad to see him get the credit he deserves,” Reddy said.
A team of Harker upper school students has won a grant of $9,110 to build an electric generator that will use solar power without the costly, cumbersome panels. The team consists of Prag Batra, Sachin Jain and Jay Reddy, all grade 12, Ramakrishnan Menon, Wilbur Yang and Shantanu Joshi, all grade 11, and grade 10 students Nikhil Dilip and Pranav Batra.
The team’s invention is intended to be an alternative for individuals or businesses who seek a cheaper solution for using green energy. “By capturing solar energy, converting it to heat and then harnessing this heat to generate electricity over a body of water – lake, ocean, even swimming pool – we can generate electricity at a lower cost than with conventional solar panels,” Batra said.
Earlier this year, the team, coached by math teacher Anthony Silk, proposed their project for this year’s InvenTeam outreach initiative, run by the Lemelson-MIT Program, which awards grants to teams of high school students wishing to see their inventions become reality. The team also received help from adviser and physics teacher Mark Brada, mentor Eric Toberer, assistant professor of physics at the Colorado School of Mines, and mentor Jeff Snyder, faculty associate in applied physics and materials science from the California Institute of Technology.
Possible applications for the generator are numerous. “For instance, the device could be used on almost any body of water and could be incorporated into future boats to provide renewable, portable power at sea,” Batra said. “In the process, the device would help reduce reliance on non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels and provide clean energy without negative environmental impacts such as air or water pollution.”
They plan to use the grant money to purchase materials for the generator, and plan to seek additional funds to cover travel costs for a trip to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Eurekafest in June, where they will showcase their invention. “We intend to have the device completed by early- to mid-June in time for Eurekafest,” Batra said. “If possible, we hope to demo the device for the school before the end of the school year.”