Solar Test Station

4th Grade STEM students were tasked with making observations on how fast the discs on the motors would spin when different colored gels were placed over the solar cells. Their experiments led them to believe that the various colors allowed different amounts of light through and the reduction in light transmitted through the colored gel created less electricity and thus the disc would spin slower. 

While many hours went into the design and testing for this project, the shape is not integral to the experiment. The STEM Research students designed this test platform to be laser cut from 1/8" birch plywood and easily assembled. The main design criteria was that the entire stand must be able to disassemble and store 6 test stands inside one plastic storage container. A total of 24 test stands were build, assembled and tested before being deployed at 4 elementary schools.