VINSE High School Field Trip program Fall 2013 & Spring 2014
Small groups of students from across middle Tennessee high schools learned how to squeeze electricity from a blackberry.
The students mashed blackberries, extracted their juice, soaked an electrode in the juice, coated another electrode with graphite and clipped them together to make a solar cell. After the solar cells were finished, the students got to measure the amount of electricity that each produced to see whose cell performed the best. These crude devices don’t produce a lot of electricity—about enough to power a small electronic calculator—but they can give a person a small shock.
The students also examined the material that they used to make the solar cells with one of VINSE’s scanning electron microscopes. These instruments can magnify objects by as much as 500,000 times, enough to allow the students to see nanoscale features that are 50,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Students also learned how these tiny features can affect how much sunlight a solar cell can capture.
2013-2014 Participating Schools
- Rossview High School, Montgomery County
- Summit High School, Williamson County
- Waverly High School, Humphreys County
- Portland High School, Sumner County
- Donelson Christian Academy, Davidson County
- Middle College High School, Williamson County
- White House Heritage High School, Robertson County
- Greenbrier High School, Robertson County
- Gallatin High School, Sumner County
- Livingston Academy, Overton County
- Fairview High School, Williamson County
- Cornersville High School, Marshall County
- Merrol Hyde Magnet School, Sumner County
- Jo Byrns High School, Robertson County
- Northwest High School, Montgomery County
- Hickman County High School, Hickman County
- Pearl Cohn High School, Davidson County
- Sycamore High School, Cheatham County
- Lebanon High School, Wilson County
- Stratford High School, Davidson County
- Creek Wood High School, Dickson County
- Hillsboro High School, Davidson County
- LEAD Academy, Davidson County
- Mt. Juliet High School, Wilson County