Be Open. Creative Ideas are Everywhere

It was Friday afternoon before the long weekend. I was among enthusiastic folks, folks who are open, folks who are not afraid to ask the questions, folks who are creative, folks who are not inhibited by “can’t be done”.

I was there to showcase the transition of clean energy, transformation of renewable energy to renewable fuel and chemicals. We started with why does the interior of the car get heated up. One person says the heat is trapped and after few answers another person hits the nail on the head, the glass traps the radiation. Then I transition to earth and the answer of green house gases and CO2 come flying in from the person who answered the question on glass trapping the radiation.

After explaining the energy transformations and how electrochemical transformation can be efficient, we moved to the demonstration. We used a small solar panel to split water to hydrogen and oxygen and use generated reactants to drive a car. As we start electrolysis, the folks got excited and I pose another question on the volumes of hydrogen and oxygen. I prod them and ask the formula for water and the folks answer H2O and bang, they got the ratio of volume being 2:1. Then comes the comment from our star, if we had used hydrogen per oxide, the volume would have been 1:1. I was floored by his critical thinking!?

The folks were enjoying the ride as we keep electrolyzing water and running the car and then as we were wrapping up, our star had another incredible and intelligent comment - among the hydrogen and oxygen is one going to be limiting and if that is the case he was wondering if we could increase the content of one. Well, he did not say the words “improving mass transport” but thinking and solving for it.?

Now, can you believe that this set of folks are 4th grade elementary students and that our star who has been answering and solving the issues is visually impaired? I went in to inspire and I walked away inspired. Be open: good creative ideas are everywhere.

Thanks to Vetri Labs , Community Resources for Science , ECS - The Electrochemical Society IEEE division, I had a wonderful afternoon!