Big Congratulations to K~

K~ won first place for his entry in the 5th grade science fair!!

I cannot tell you how proud I am. K~ came up with this project on his own, decided how he wanted to test it, and really had a passion for it all the way through.

The best I can figure, the seed for this project was planted last year when we accidently found an earth sheltered home a couple of towns over; he was fascinated with the idea of why people would build homes covered earth. He wanted to find out in this experiment which home might use less energy and would "Protect the earth better." I helped him to build two identicle homes out of hardboard and MDF, and then he covered one of them in a way similar to a typical earth sheltered home.

After the homes were built, we tested them by taking a base temperature and then putting them under a heat lamp and taking measurements at 1 and 2 hours both inside and outside the homes. We found that the earth sheltered home inside increased to 53% of what the outside temperature was, but the standard house increased to 61% of what the outside temperature was. In other words, even though the earth sheltered home's temperature had a greater gain, the inside maintained a more even temperature throughout the test. This is one of the reasons that this type of home is considered to be one of the most eneergy efficient types of homes that can be built.

Anyway, all details to the side, K~ did an awesome job, and made me very proud. I like to hope that I had a bit of influence in his interests, but I certainly had a great time helping him with the project either way. He's already thinking about improving the project for next year; one teacher that was over the fair singled K~ out to tell him that with a little bit of effort, next year he could easily take this project to the regional competition.