The  students in Dan Spear’s, Nathaniel Blauss’s and Bob Brigham’s physics classes are putting the final touches on their display posters in preparation for the third annual Physics Energy Poster Fair, to  be held in the Great Room of Berkshire Hall on Monday night, Jan 31^st. Teams of two or three students work together to research a particular energy source, investigating either the technology associated with making the energy available or the current and future uses of the energy source. The students  then use the fruits of their research to construct an eye-catching and informative poster to display at the Fair.

The Fair was originally conceived of as a natural outgrowth of Berkshire’s focus on energy use and conservation ,  and sustainability. As citizens of their towns, our students will eventually be asked to make decisions about how power that they are using should be generated.  The Fair is designed to help students go beyond headlines and buzz words, like “No Nukes” and “ Go Green”, to try to understand what is involved, for example,  in making electricity at a nuclear-powered facility or what the advantages or limitations might be to expanding the use of wind power or what is involved in constructing a solar electric facility.  The Fair then challenges students to be creative in their presentations and prepared to explain and elaborate on their work in one-on-one conversations with their peers and adults.

Some of the students in Nathaniel Blauss’s F period class voiced their thoughts on the Fair and on what they had learned in preparing for it. The team of Caroline Wood, Roya Daemi and Bella Sinsigalli, finalizing the layout of the visuals for their poster, noted that they had learned quite a bit about the applications of geothermal energy.  “ I was surprised to find that geothermal  energy comprises 8 – 10% of the energy used in some places in the world – I didn’t know it was used so much” said Wood.  Added Sinsigalli “ I didn’t realize how deep into the earth you had to go to get geothermal energy, or how expensive it is.” Meanwhile, across the room  the geothermal technology group of Corey Wisnowski, Chloe Lerman and Scott McLinden were applying glitter glue to the letters destined to adorn their poster.  When asked what they had enjoyed most about the project, the team agreed;  “ Putting the poster together”.

 In its first two years, the Fair has attracted a large audience of students, faculty and faculty children to tour the displays and ask questions of the posters’ authors. This year, there will be a small addition to the audience;  the third  formers in the Energy Investigations class will be interviewing some of their peers about their work, as a part of their current unit on aspects of chemical energy .