Barre Solar Challenge: A Generation of Partnership, Exploration and Learning

Among the 120 students in 6th grade team at the Barre Elementary and Middle School, the VEEP Solar Challenge consistently ranks as the one of the top-rated units, and among the most remembered, by returning students.  This is according to teachers Maggie Bensen and Jody Leone, who have been partnering with VEEP to conduct the Solar Challenge, every March, since the early 1990’s.  In the Solar Challenge student teams are all given the same task- to design and build a device that will increase the temperature of water using the sun’s energy.  With on-going training and materials support from VEEP, several generations of Barre teachers have learned and implemented this project, teaching thousands of students about renewable energy, physics, and the power of the sun.

In the Solar Challenge, students must calculate the temperate increase, cost effectiveness, and energy efficiency of their solar concentrators.   Understanding cost effectiveness helps students address real world concerns faced when making decisions to install renewable technologies in the homes or businesses, such as: can I afford to put this in my house, is it worth my investment?   Most teams’ concentrators increased the temperature of the water, some to the boiling point.

What started with Maggie and Jody has been passed on to a new generation of Barre science and math teachers.  Sherrie Singer and Matt Flynn have both received training in the Solar Challenge while at Barre, and implemented it in their classrooms.  Matt has taken the Solar Challenge with him to his next teaching assignment, in the Roxbury schools.