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Video: O.C. 4-H kids dive into biofuels experiment
October 8th, 2009, 6:15 am · 2 Comments · posted by William Diepenbrock, Editor
The activity was part of National Youth Science Day, which focused this year on these substitutes for gasoline manufactured from plants — such as used cooking oil, corn and, in many new programs, algae.
The Trabuco Trailblazers experimented with fuels such as baking soda and rubbing alcohol and yeast and corn syrup, and even dried leaves, to generate ethanol.
They used the power of the chemical reactions to blow up balloons, noting how balloon size changed depending on the materials used and the time elapsed. (The group didn’t experiment on biofuel-powered cars, as had been expected beforehand.)
A little more on the Trailblazers: They’re O.C.’s biggest club with about 160 members, growth community club leader Vicki Doddridge attributes in part to the vanishing resources for animal husbandry in the county.
If you want to run the experiment on your own, click here for all the details. All you need is a balloon, a disposable water bottle, yeast and corn syrup, or a similar combination of elements.
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I hope that the also considered the down side of using food crops for fuel. We do need energy independence and coming up with viable substitutes of various types is good. However in the rush to do that, they have replaced food crops with fuel crops, or have taken food crops and converted them to use as fuel.
We haven’t felt it so much here, but in other countries that are very dependent on corn, the price has gone up so much that it has really caused hardship among the people.
So they need to consider the total impact, not just focus on one thing that is good, but can have very negative consequences.
Doing things like using used cooking oils sounds like a good idea–although I don’t know how financially feasible it is or how widespread it may be. But any vehicles converted to that, are that many vehicles that aren’t using gasoline.
To answer your question, OC4Truth, the depth of the lesson really depended on the ages of the children participating. It was certainly not just a push for food crops for fuel. I did this experiment with my 5 year old, and the message that she took with her is that there are MANY alternate fuel sources that can ke explored, (for instance, algae was listed as a possibility), and that we can develop new and cleaner fuel sources that come from renewable sources, rather than fossil fuels.
I thought that 4-H handled this really well. It was set up so that kids of all ages and knowledge levels could could learn that there are cleaner possiblilities available. Hopefully, it also inspired the young generation to develop even better energy sources.