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Local News |
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| Youths use new tools to heighten energy awareness |
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| By Carrie Ann Knauer, Times Staff Writer |
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 |
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Ken Koons/Staff Photo
Eighth-grader Morgan Simmons uses a thermal imaging camera at Mount Airy Middle School Tuesday to determine the school’s energy usage.
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MOUNT AIRY — Eighth-grader Morgan Simmons held the camera up to her classmates, capturing ghoulish faces in red, yellow and blue.
The students weren’t wearing face paint. Simmons was using a thermal imaging camera, which detected the temperature variations in the students’ bodies and the room surrounding them.
Members of the Mount Airy Middle School Green Club got an education on energy usage and awareness Tuesday from Paul Kazyak, an employee of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and an adviser to Venturing Crew 202 of Westminster.
Kazyak brought with him the thermal imaging camera, a $3,000 piece of equipment that the Venturing Crew had bought with the prize money from a national environmental award they received last year. He allowed students to take turns with it, testing temperature differences within their classroom portable to see where there were leaks or energy vampires — items that use electricity even when they aren’t turned on.
Zach Belk, a seventh-grader, used the camera to take a picture of an electrical outlet which showed up as blue, demonstrating the loss of heat to the external wall.
“You wouldn’t think an outlet would be getting energy, but it kind of is a little bit,” Belk said.
Kazyak used another tool, called a Kill-A-Watt, which measures the energy usage of items plugged into it and then into an outlet. Kazyak demonstrated how the classroom’s LCD projector was using 4 watts without being turned on, but if the power strip it was plugged into was flipped off when not in use, it wouldn’t use any energy.
Kazyak encouraged the youths to think about energy being wasted in their own homes as well: stereos and televisions left in standby mode, electrical pencil sharpeners left plugged in despite their rare usage, or lights left on in unoccupied rooms.
Simmons said that after using the thermal imaging camera, she’s more concerned about energy being wasted in her home, and particularly in her room.
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“I wonder when my room is using energy, and I want to stop it,” she said.
Alexa Andersen, a social studies teacher and adviser to the Green Club, said the energy awareness talk Tuesday was in preparation for the school’s Energy Awareness Week during the first week of March. Students have been given worksheets where they’ll be tracking teachers who leave their room lights on when the room is empty, and calculating how much energy is being wasted and how much money that’s costing the school.
The students will then hang signs on classroom doors, with either an “energy star” for those who are saving electricity, or an “energy hog” for those who are wasting it.
Andersen said this is the first year for the Green Club at the school, and she’s been impressed with the students’ enthusiasm.
“It’s been a really fun group of kids to work with,” Andersen said.
The club meets twice a month, she said, and has had up to 36 members at some meetings. While energy awareness is one of the group’s focuses for March, in April, it hopes to plant a rain garden that will capture rain runoff from the school’s parking lot and rooftops to be used in a more environmentally friendly way.
Reach staff writer Carrie Ann Knauer at 410-857-7874 or carrie.knauer@carrollcountytimes.com.
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