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High Schoolers Seek “Visionary” Title
posted (December 1, 2014)
On Wednesday, the insurance company SAGICOR will launch what it calls "The Visionaries Challenge." It's the national component of a regional campaign to increase innovation in the region.

And the students at Canaan SDS High School think they have the right stuff. Monica Bodden found out about their very cool invention today:..

Monica Bodden reporting
What you're looking at is an electromagnetic generator ventilation system- created by eight students of Canaan High School.

Edwardo Garcia 4th Form Science
"Okay basically what you see here is an electromagnetic generator ventilation system. How this works is simply by a bike frame that's there, an alternator, a vehicle battery, an inverter and a fan - that's the ventilation system right there. What's working the fan is the battery itself. The battery is going the currant for the fan to be able to spin, but once the battery runs out of currant, we have the alternator attached to the bike and when you spin the bike, the alternator rotates and creates electricity which charge up the battery and then the battery goes to the inverter and then the inverter inverts electricity to a 110 volts, then the fan pretty much just uses the electricity. You can pretty much plug anything you want into the inverter because it has a normal outlet."

During physical education, the students will ride the bicycles which will be connected to a motor known as the alternator- creating electricity that will power the batteries.

Pedro Garcia - Chemistry Teacher
"You might be wondering well who will spin this. Well we have a system here in school first and second form they have physical education, so it's going to be workout using the energy. This is what we call in physics perpetual energy. Using energy out of energy itself, so it's everything green - everything clean."

It took the students only two weeks to complete the project.

Monica Bodden
"How long it took you guys to get this up and running?"

Edwardo Garcia 4th Form Science
"We were working on it for two weeks and this entire week from Monday we have been working with setting up the bike together, setting up the alternator, getting the battery and the different materials."

Pedro Garcia is the schools Chemistry Teacher - he has been working along with the students closely to create the device.

The electromagnetic generator ventilation system will be submitted in the Sagicor Visionaries Challenge Competition on Wednesday.

Pedro Garcia - Chemistry Teacher
"We are here making this project for Sagicor. It's a Sagicor competition and well we want to let you know that we are working here, Canaan High School has something to offer. To enter the competition we had to write a 12-page report first and then submit that in by the 31st October. So even before the 31st October we were actually working on the actual budgeting - all the different materials that we needed, but it took us about somewhere around 3 weeks max and up to weekends we would come here and stay up to 6pm in the evenings. So we were working hard on this."

The ventilation system will also be used in two of the schools classrooms. Marley Gillett explained the micro model.

Marley Gillett - 4th Form Student
"As you can see behind me we have replica one of the classroom industrial containers to show how we would set up the diagram of the bicycle frames and how it would benefit the classrooms due to the heat that is produced from the sun and is conducted in the classroom because of the industrial containers."

Monica Bodden
"So in this classroom setting, where would the bike go, where would the whole setup works?"

Marley Gillett - 4th Form Student
"The bicycle would go in its own individual room as you can see over there. It would have its own shed due to the fact that as you can notice it rains some days and we would not want it to be affected or destroyed, so we had made a shed for it alone."

Pedro Garcia - Chemistry Teacher
"We plan to use this if we win and of course at the competition we have some entrepreneurs and other people that will be viewing and if they like our idea they would be implementing it in a larger scale. So we might be seeing 10, 11, 20 of these bikes in a certain storeroom."

You can vote for the students of Canaan High School on Facebook or on Wednesday at the Princess Hotel when Sagicor will be hosting the competition.

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