Middle school teachers in Ames, Iowa have received an education on hydrogen cars. This is thanks to the National Renewable Energy Lab and expert Rick Shin. The point of the exercise was to teach the teachers about miniature hydrogen cars so they could then go back to class and impart their knowledge to their students.
The students will then receive the task of building their own miniature hydrogen cars, which they will then race. Students will need to supply their own materials, rather than buying a miniature hydrogen car kit off the Internet, and will compete to see whose car is the lightest and the fastest.
The fact that this kind of education is going on in Iowa comes as no surprise. Iowa is one of the Midwest’s most progressive states when it comes to alternative energy research and development. Let’s not forget that the Hydrogen Engine Center is based in Algona, Iowa and they’ve made a thriving business on converting gasoline or diesel internal combustion engines to run on hydrogen.
In addition, the Biomass Energy Conversion Center (BECON) is based in Ames, Iowa with an office in Nevada, Iowa as well. Besides working with biomass and wind energy the center in Nevada, Iowa has also switched over to using two stationary hydrogen fuel cells as backup power for the facility.
A few years from now the students who had worked on building miniature hydrogen racecars may be driving the large production versions to their jobs working at BECON or some other facility, helping to clean up the environment and making the world a better place.