When this project was first introduced to me I did not know that I would take such a huge interest in it. Overall I thought this would be another project where we would be given rules and have to follow those rules and guidelines to get the grade we want, but this project is different. It’s not about the grade, it’s about being able to help the people who are in need of light. People who suffer from the lack of electricity, people who compared to us have way more hardships.

The first real interactions we had for this project was the Skype chat with the Dominican Republic. This chat informed us about the living conditions the population there are experiencing. We were told about the Bateyes, the house fires cause by the Kerosene lamps and the lack of electricity. We talked about the sugarcane fields and how children were paid slaves.

There were two teachers and two students that gave us information on that day, the names of the teachers were Eladio and Dennis. They were the people Mr. Robinson contacted for us to be able to chat with them and ask them about their conditions.

I had the opportunity to ask a question during the Skype chat and my question was “How well does the electricity that you have work, and is there a difference between different communities?”

 

 

 

The answer to my question was that if you lived close to the capital you were fine but the other communities, they had about 3-4 hours of electricity per day and the quality of the electricity was questionable.

 

The next skype chat was with a grade 11 class in New Brunswick whose teacher was Mr. Fogarty, we were informed of information we should know first before starting off the project. Mr.Fogarty had one of his students talk to us about what she was planning on making and he also told us what worked and what did not for him.

This time I once again had the chance of asking a question about using electro magnetic fields to make the lights work and here is a clip of me asking that,

img_1519

Overall the experience of chatting with someone online and asking them questions has interested me because you can ask questions and get answers on the spot.

~~

Plans:

My group of 4 wants to create lights that work using electromagnetism, we have started talking with Afshin Zarei (My dad) who is an electrician and has accepted the offer of helping us. So far we are talking about the rough draft and I am trying to get the first sketches done. The way our lights will work is that whenever you shake the light, the battery charges. Once the battery charges you can use it as your light source at night. The way that works is that there is a coiled wire and a magnet inside the battery that create the kinetic charge for the battery.

Here is a draft sketch of how it might look on the inside,

I’m very excited for this project and can’t wait to some day look back and see what I accomplished from this design.

~~~

So to be able to do this and make our lights we will need to have the funds and to do this we have different fundraising groups helping us. We have people organizing a photo booth on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. December 7th til 9th. We also have a MyClassNeeds website which is one of our fundraising sources:

Here is the link to it,