It's pretty cold here at the moment, -18℃. If we were doing our group 4 project today we would choose a wintery theme like snow. It's all very well saying that now but the year we actually planned to do snow there wasn't any. This years group 4 project is equally risky, Solar power in June should be OK but this is Norway. If there is no sun on the day we can use a large stage light so hopefully we will be alright.

The students will be split into teams of 6 and given the task of building a mini solar farm. They will be given the following material and equipment:

• 0.25 m² base board
• 100 2cm x 2 cm mirrors
• 6 photovoltaic cells
• some copper gauze, graphoil and glass plates for making photovoltaic cells.
• resistance wire
• connecting wire
• soldering iron
• glue gun
• small metal can
• multimeter

There will be two challenges:

1. Using the photovoltaic cells and mirrors, raise the temperature of a sample of water. Highest temperature increase in 1 minute wins.
2. Using the copper gauze etc, construct an array of photovoltaic cells to pass a current through a resistance wire. Highest power delivered to wire wins.

Actually there will be another dimension, to give the biology students more to do we will give them some plants and they will try to measure the amount of plant matter (fuel) that can be produced by photosynthesis in the given area.