This cache is located at a school with administrative permission. During the school year, between August and the end of May, please do not visit between the hours of 8-4.
Afternoons, nights, weekends, and summer are just fine!
Geocache Description:
Geocache Requirements
Climate change is affecting everyone around the globe. Climate change will increasingly make these effects more pronounced. How do we address challenges associated with climate change? How do we reduce our need for fossil fuels as our main source of energy? Solutions exist and this cache illustrates a small way in which human behavior and ingenuity can be harnessed toward a better world.
This solution powers an entire school for a full year. What you see before you was the result of a five year process that began with a student design project.
Please leave a comment about something you learned when you find it!
Solar Energy
Solar cells are made of a semiconductor material. Semi-, because the material conducts electricity better than an insulator but not as well as a conducting metal like copper. Sunlight strikes the semiconductor material and this energy is transfered to negatively charged electrons. These electrons produce a current, which is then transferred through the cell by the thin metal conductive contacts. Cells are additive, such that while a single cell might only produce 0.5V, adding many of them into an array can create panels with much higher production capacity. The diagram below illustrates how PV cells work, courtesty of the Energy Information Administration.
Solar energy can reduce air pollution in general and pollution associated with greenhouse gases, in particular, by up to 90%. This is even after taking into account the use of fossil fuels to mine and manufacture the panels. One of the major criticisms of this technology is the resource extraction necessary to provide the raw materials needed to produce them. Silicon is the major resource needed, as it is the semiconductor material used in the vast majority of panels.
Where is silicon obtained? It can be mined from quartzite (metamorphosed sandstone) but is most often mined from sand. The supply chain for solar panels begins with silicon that is melted into ingots. From there it is manufactured into wafers, and so on. See the image below from the Department of Energy.
This cache is located on the grounds of Triplett Technical Institute and Massanutten Regional Governor's School for Integrated Environmental Science and Technology. For decades, Triplett Tech has served Shenandoah County citizens as the place for students in the public schools to begin learning vocational trades. Students can take classes in nursing, culinary arts, automotive tech, collision repair, masonry, electricity, cybersecurity, and more. Massanutten Regional Governor's School, MRGS, serves students from ten regional high schools (Shenandoah, Page, Luray, Rockingham, and Harrisonburg) who apply for attendance. One of Virginia's academic-year governor's schools, the MRGS curriculum consists of Environmental Science, Agroecology, English Literature and Composition, Statistics, and Calculus. The cornerstones of the school's mission is the collaborative project-based educational environment and students independent research.
Sandy semiconductors is dedicated to all the students in these programs as it exemplifies the unity of the sciences and trade vocations.
This cache contains items for exchange. If there are silica samples when you come, take a sample! That's data...but don't take it for granite!