About 150 students in grades six through 12 are poised to participate in the Permian Basin Science and Engineering Fair Saturday in the University of Texas Permian Basin gym.
Judges report to the upper level of the gym at 8 a.m. and the judging should be completed about noon.
Douglas Young, senior lecturer, area coordinator in physics and co-director of the Permian Basin Science and Engineering Fair, said they are offering a light breakfast and sack lunch for the judges.
The event is not open to the public.
Jessica Raymond is co-director of the fair.
Young said the number of students taking part is less than they normally have.
“We cancelled the elementary division fair this year, so that we can do social distancing for the junior and senior divisions. But we are hoping to bring back the elementary division next year assuming we don’t have to social distance anymore …,” Young added.
He added that the junior and senior portion is driven by the state science fair, held at Texas A&M University in College Station. Young said the state fair wants that data by March 1 so they can start preparing for students to come to College Station.
Young said they have good representation from UTPB STEM Academy, St. John’s Episcopal School and St. Mary’s Central Catholic School, for example.
They also typically get participants from area schools.
Seventeen-year-old STEM Academy junior Allison Barnes said she has designed a solar updraft tower for the fair. The aim of the tower is to turn solar and wind energy into electricity.
“… Hopefully it’s very low cost to construct relative to other energy options. Hopefully, it could be implemented in the future (in) lower-income countries (where it’s) very warm, because it works best in very hot, arid environments. … Sub Saharan Africa would be the perfect environment for this kind of device,” Barnes said.
“… There’s been previous solar updraft towers in existence, but I’ve made significant improvements, including dividing the collectors into three, powering three motors instead of just one, which is what the traditional one does. I also added a way for it to utilize wind energy. I call them sails, because they kind of look like sails on the edges of the collector. And what that does is when the wind blows, it drives the wind inside the collector and so it uses that wind to rotate the fan,” Barnes added.
She said the tower is 12 feet in diameter and then seven feet tall “because it won’t fit in my garage.”
“This is the scaled down version,” Barnes added.
She said she’s not sure about scale.
“… I think it will scale on an exponential curve. That’s a fairly wild guess just based on some reading that I did. If it does, then you want these things as large as you can get them. The bigger they are, the larger heat collector area they have, the more wind they can collect, the easier it is to power the fans and generate more electricity. So size is important. That’s why I didn’t build a small one because I think that if it’s too small you just won’t be able to register an output of voltage,” Barnes said.
When it’s cold outside and there is snow on the ground, she said she got maybe 0.1 volts.
“But I am going to test it over the summer on the Summer Solstice when it’s warm,” Barnes said.
“… I tested it. I lit a smoke bomb underneath it. … I wanted to see the wind flow to make sure it was doing what I wanted and so I can definitely ensure that the wind does flow up through the turbines and it is generating electricity that way. I think when I test it on the Summer Solstice, I’ll get much better outputs out of it because it’ll get hot,” she said.
Barnes came up with the idea of a solar updraft tower reading about different electricity technology.
“… I knew I wanted to do an environmental engineering project. … I thought for a while about trying to attach solar panels to wind turbines, but that gets incredibly complicated incredibly fast. And I just didn’t want to go there. But as I was reading about that, I came across these solar updraft towers. Da Vinci made one that would rotate a baster essentially. It used the updraft from the fire to rotate a baster for a turkey, so you wouldn’t have to touch it. So I applied those ideas to a new, different way of approaching this sort of concept,” Barnes said.
As for why she chose the Summer Solstice, because the longer the day, the more time you have to collect heat and to get the electricity output.
“Also, it’s one of the hottest days of the year, usually, because it’s in mid-July so it’s very warm on that period. But the longer the day, the better it is. These things will operate best on the equator because it’s always warm and the days are very long.”
She noted that you could adjust the positions of the collectors, depending on where you are on the globe, to accommodate for the best sunlight. But she just made them all equidistant from each other in a circle. But you could change that later.
“My perspective on reducing global warming and climate emissions is there’s not going to be one technology that’s going to replace fossil fuels. We’re going to have to have lots of different power plants and ways to produce electricity to replace gasoline. I don’t think we’re going to get rid of it completely for a very, very long time because building an aircraft out of a battery is very difficult because of fuel efficiency and all of that,” Barnes said.
When she is older, Barnes said she wants to go into aerospace engineering and design airplanes.
“… I’ve always had an interest in environmental engineering. It’s just not my future goal. But the same principles actually apply with the wind flow and those sorts of things. Those actually translate very well to air foils and aerospace engineering stuff,” Barnes said.
Young said the fair is supposed to mimic a science or engineering conference so students are discouraged from bringing their projects.
Barnes said usually judges come around, she offers a short presentation and they ask questions.
Young said they will be sending one project from Odessa to the International Science and Engineering Fair from the senior division. He added that they are affiliated with that fair.
“… If they go to state, they can also win at state and go to the international fair that way, as well,” Young said.
