| Students educated about alternative fuel sources(5/08) | | Print | |
| Written by Eliza Hidalgo | |
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After studying global warming and alternative fuel sources, an Advanced Placement Chemistry class put their newfound knowledge to use, converting vegetable oil into usable biodiesel.
Chemistry teacher Bryan Marten decided to include a global warming and alternative energy unit in his curriculum after conducting researching at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab on climate change last year. On May 20, Marten took his Advanced Placement Chemistry class to the Alameda County Transit Hydrogen Fuel Cell Facility in Oakland and to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley to see how alternative fuels work and how they can help slow down global warming. To prepare for their field trip, Marten’s class generated their own hydrogen and oxygen during lab time. From this experiment the class “saw the amount of energy that can be released from hydrogen,” Marten said. “At AC Transit, the students were able to view another way in which natural gas can be converted into hydrogen. They saw how the company uses it as an alternative fuel in their fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses.” Later that day, students learned about global warming at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “At the Lawrence Berkeley lab we learned about alternative fuel sources and how they can help prevent global warming,” junior Tom Tong said. “We learned that gases such as pure hydrogen don’t use carbon dioxide, which is the big cause of global warming.” After learning about how they would be more environmentally friendly, students returned to school to “convert vegetable oil, which is energy collected by plants from the sun, into biodiesel,” Marten said. “The students will put the biodiesel into my gas tank today or early next week.” |
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