MudWatt: Make Power From Mud!
Posted on April 11, 2015 Comments (0)
Keegan Cooke and Kevin Rand created MudWatt kits as a way to engage kids/students with science. From the website:
Unfortunately, our experience in school wasn’t unique. In 2011, less than one-third of 8th graders in the U.S. were deemed proficient in science. Today, 70% of the fastest growing careers are in STEM fields. The supply of STEM education is not meeting the demand.
Most of the world’s mud contain microbes that produce electricity when they eat. That is the engine driving the MudWatt. Colonies of special bacteria (called shewanella and geobacter) generate the electricity in a MudWatt.
The electricity output is proportional to the health and activity of that bacterial colony. By maintaining these colonies in different ways, you can use MudWatt to run all kinds of great experiments. Thus the MudWatt allows kids to engage with science, using their natural curiosity to experiment and learn. Engaging this too-often-neglected human potential will bring joy to those kids (as kids and as grown-ups) and benefit our society.
With standard topsoils, typical power levels are around 100 microWatts, which is enough to power the LED, buzzer, clock, etc..
Related: Arduino, open source hardware (Introduction Video Tutorial) – Teaching Through Tinkering – Awesome Gifts for the Maker in Your Life – Qubits Construction Toy
Categories: K-12, Products, Science
Tags: bacteria, electricity, Energy, experiment, gifts, home engineering, K-12, kids, learning, microbes, Products, scientific literacy, toys
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