YOU, MY FRIEND ARE TOO MUCH! Great! Thanks for the giving of you time
to the up coming generation ! Walt 11/19
On Nov 19, 2008, at 6:15 PM, Al Lococo wrote:
Folks,
The future of America is in good hands. I had the chance today to
participate in "The Great American Teach-In" at Auburndale Central
Elementary School. They had a very well structured and organized
program, which gave me the opportunity to address two separate
groups of fourth and fifth graders. I spent about 20 minutes in the
classroom and then spent ten minutes with them outside at the
Electric Truck. At the end they all gathered together outside to
see my car follow a gasoline dune buggy drive around the PE field.
One little girl asked, while I was explaining a serial hybrid,
"where do you put the cereal?" What a great question.
I told the children they are the future of America. I asked if they
knew the story of Paul Revere? I told them, like Paul Revere, I was
there to tell them the Electric cars are coming. We talked about
the flexibility of Electric vehicles because they use electricity
generated from a wide variety of energy sources.
We went over the list, consisting of solar, wind, Hydro electric,
nuclear, geo thermal, tidal and fossil fuels such as coal, gas and
oil. We had fun with that for a while and then we went into
parallel and serial hybrids and battery electric vehicles. You
might think this is too much for these young people, but I used some
very nice schematics from an MIT paper. I explained that the Toyota
Prius is a parallel hybrid and that both the Gasoline engine and the
electric motor drive the wheels. I mentioned that in the Chevy
Volt, a serial hybrid, only the electric motor drives the wheels.
This is the fun part, that they related to very well. I asked them
if they knew the song that tells about the dry bones. The leg
bone's connected to the hipbone etc. Well they really got
into, . . . the gasoline engine's connected to the generator the
generator's connected to the battery and the battery's connected to
the electric motor and the electric motor's connected the wheels and
the wheels go round and round. The whole class was chanting the
litany of connections in a serial hybrid. Who would have thought?
We went from there to the Battery Electric vehicle with just the
battery and the electric motor. It was easy to make the point about
the simplicity of the BEV. They caught on to that right away.
So, I would like to encourage you to visit these younger children at
their schools. You don't have to talk down to them, but you do need
to work at their level. They are very smart and very interested in
energy and the environment and what we all are doing.
The experience was very rewarding.
Cheers,
Al Lococo
www.evprogress.org
Think Globally, Act Locally!
Plug-in, we have the technology, the NiMH powered RAV4 EV is the
proof.
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