On July 30 2019, WiP Boston spent the day with 13 girls from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts for a STEM exposure event.

The day started off with a tour of National Grid’s 1.25 MW Solar Generation Site at Dorchester, MA. The site is located next to the famous multicolored liquefied natural gas tank. The panels can be easily seen from Route I-93.

Aram Shishmanian and Carmine Luongo of National Grid showed the group around the facility and described how energy is generated from the sun with photovoltaic plates and then distributed out into the electric grid to power homes in the area.

Next Stop was Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) located in Boston, MA. BFIT is a college of engineering and industrial technologies serving the Boston region, committed to student success and career readiness in technology fields. The group was welcomed by Dr. Lisa Shatz, chair and professor of Electrical Engineering.

After lunch, the girls had a brief overview of the different energy sources.

To reinforce the lesson on types of generation, the girls had the opportunity to build their own wind turbines that power light bulbs. Abby Bahlmann, a Junior at BFIT and member of the local PES student chapter assisted the girls with their project. The girls showed their engineering skills, when things didn’t work out according plan. They used glue sticks and duck-tape to make some of the wind turbines work properly. Everyone in attendance was excited to see the bulbs light up, which everyone got to see.

At the end of the day, the girls were provided solar oven kits to build and use at their leisure back at camp.