Aug 7, 2009 4:00 pm US/Eastern
Green Scene: Hair Dryers Teach Green In Overbrook
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
Green learning doesn't stop in the summer. Getting teenagers interested in green jobs is the goal of a program in Overbrook.
At Overbrook Art Center, a hair dryer is a teaching tool, testing wind turbines built by teens using common household objects.
Ann Devine, an environmental educator for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, explained, "They've been building their own wind turbines and participating in a competition to see which one can pull up the most paper clips using a hair dryer in their turbines."
Sometimes they can reel in those paper clips. Sometimes it's back to the drawing board.
13-year-old Darius Hurst Rodney was hard at work with his group. "What we're fixing is the stability of it, because it started kind of flabby and shakes side to side," said Darius. "And we're also trying to fix how it spins."
These wind turbines won't power the planet. But the founder of the Overbrook Environmental Education Center, Jerome Shabazz, hopes the skills learned here such as physics, engineering, and creativity, will inspire these teens to pursue green jobs.
"They can see science come to life, and we want it to be a natural thing for them as opposed to something they just read about in school," said Shabazz.
Shabazz hopes to expand the teaching to a lot next door that was a quarry. Water mitigation is already being used in the parking lot, and an abandoned building will get a green makeover.
Shabazz hopes to make that building into a fresh food store, bringing a little more green to his neighborhood.
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