Solar Moodlamps

Children built solar powered moodlamps to take home, learning about electricity and solar panels. Children learned to solder LEDs, and lamps were decorated with spin paintings.

Personal notes

I co-designed and co-facilitated this workshop for the Abu Dhabi science festival.

The main challenge of this workshop was to come up with something that was cheap enough to give away, but still provide an engaging learning experience. We co-opted solar garden lights as a way of cheaply getting the battery, solar panel and LED.

We also came up with the idea of using a bicycle wheel to facilitate easy and beautiful shades for the lamps.

Learning objectives

• What is a solar panel and how does it work?
• How can we store the power from the sun to use at night?
• What is electricity, and how does it do useful work?
• What is an LED, how does it work?

Impact

2000 children took part in the workshop in October 2013.

References

Matthew produced and facilitated an interactive 45 minute workshop for Abu Dhabi Science Festival. The festival requires content providers to work to tight deadlines and to respond to different briefs and requirements each year. The festival is very large, welcoming over 150,000 visitors annually and consequently workshops can be very busy. Mathew’s innovative workshops worked very well in this environment and were always popular and well received by visitors. Participating in the event requires great team-working skills and flexibility. Mathew was required to deliver training to his teams of local science communicators and then mentor them throughout the event to deliver in both English and Arabic. He was able to do so with skill and confidence. We have no hesitation in recommending him and his team for any science communication event.

Gill Duncan
Senior Projects Manager EISF.