The Willetton student team is sending us monthly video updates of their progress. Check them out:
Name: Willetton Senior High School
Location: Perth, Australia
Their Solar Story: Students build and race a solar-powered car across Australia
His Bright Hope: To show the world the power of solar car technology, and get people thinking about how solar cars can be part of everyone’s future.
One of the youngest teams to compete in the 2009 race will be a group of 12 to 15-year-old students from the Willetton Senior High School in Perth, led by their award-winning science teacher Darren Hamley.
Darren is a twenty-year veteran teacher, whose philosophy is to teach students to be scientists rather than just teaching them science. To that end, he engages students in a number of hands-on solar projects in the workshop next to his classroom, including building a solar-powered bicycle and a solar-powered reverse-osmosis water pump, not to mention the solar car they will race in October. There are even solar panels on the roof of the workshop, so that not only will the car be powered entirely by solar energy, but it will have been built with solar too.
Darren became involved in the World Solar Challenge in 2007, when an organization called the SunGroper Car Association approached him and offered to donate its car to his students. He gladly took them up on the offer, and prepared his team of students to enter the 2007 race as the youngest competitors to participate.
The students that get to participate in the Challenge are all part of Willetton’s gifted and talented program, which is coordinated by Darren and his colleague Greg Miller, the Solar Car Team Manager. The challenge for students is not just to drive across Australia, but also to survive for several weeks under very challenging conditions. Once the race is under way, the students are in charge of everything—they are the pit crew, the mechanics, and the cooks.
Darren has set a goal for this year’s challenge—he would like the Willetton team to finish the race, averaging 70 kilometers per hour and 300 kilometers each day. But no matter how they place in the competition, it will have been worth the journey. Says Darren, “There’s nothing more exciting than working with kids who love what they’re doing.”