Alabama's STEM Explores is made possible by the generous support of the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology Southern Research.

Solving the World's Hardest Problems, the Holle Family Foundation.

Alabama Works.

Alabama's STEM Council.

Alabama Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering Coalition.

Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative.

Oh, no, this is my laptop is about to lose its power.

What did I do with that charger?

How am I supposed to do my homework if I can't even charge my battery?

Did you ever wonder how a battery gets its power?

Does have a little motor inside of it.

Well, come with me.

I know who we can ask to find out.

Hi, I'm Nilah and I'm here with my friend Neal, and we're here at the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology.

And I was just telling Neal about my computer battery.

So I was wondering what gives a battery its power and what happens when it runs out of charge?

Those are great questions.

Nilah a battery is a way to store energy until you need it at a later time.

And so for your computer battery, when you turn your computer on, the battery converts the stored energy into electrical energy.

So the computer does its work.

And then as you continue working, it uses that energy and it loses its charge and then it ultimately runs out of power.

OK. And that's when you need to know where your charger.

So let's use an example.

So do you know what this is?

I know that this is a funnel and this is some kind of spinning wheel.

Yeah.

So this is a water water wheel that you might find at the beach.

And what do you need to actually turn the wheel water?

That's right.

So here's a little bit of water, a small bottle.

You can think of this a little bit like a battery.

This is stored energy.

If I unscrew the top and poured it in, the wheel would turn right.

But right now, it's just waiting to be used.

This is a little bit like a small battery.

But let's talk about a battery that's got a lot more charge, like maybe that water cooler right there.

Now that's full of water that I've colored blue just to make it easier to see.

So what do you think is going to happen when you open that spout?

I think that water will just flow out and make the Wiltern.

That's exactly what I think will happen, to go ahead and see what happens.

Open it up all the way.

OK, so there we go.

So the water's coming through.

Let me move that just a little bit and it's causing the wheel to turn.

Now, there's some things that I want us to pay attention to that make this a little bit like a battery.

Now, clearly, batteries don't store water, but this is a pretty large storage unit.

So there's a lot of water in there that can be used and the water is coming out at a pretty consistent rate.

Do you know what a current is?

Isn't it how fast something flows?

Yeah.

It's how much water comes through a certain space at a certain period of time.

When we talk about a river and the current of the river, we're talking about how much it flows.

Go ahead and turn that off.

OK.

So we have a current and the current is the amount of water that's flowing through.

We've also got a lot of weight in the water up here that's pressing down on the water below.

So there's pressure from the water up top, pushing the water at the bottom Now, gravity also pulls that water out, but the pushing power of the water above is really important.

So in this example, we've stored energy.

We've got current, which is flow.

And then we've got the pushing power of the water above.

Now, let's take that to a battery.

OK. You've probably seen a battery like this before.

Yes, in my flashlight at home.

Yep.

This is the kind of battery that you would use the flashlight, not the kind with your computer.

Now, can you tell me about the difference maybe on the ends?

I noticed that this end is raised and the other end is flat.

This represents the negative side and that is the positive side.

Perfect.

So a battery has two sides, a negative and a positive.

Just like you said, inside this battery is not water, but are chemicals.

And the chemicals combined together, there's chemical energy stored in the battery.

The chemicals combine together to lead a whole lot of negative charge at the bottom, negatively charged electrons.

And those electrons are really tightly put together And they want to spread out.

They really want to get to the top part, to the positive part.

But there's no way for them to do that in the battery.

Can you think of a way that we could help the negative electrons get to the positive?

Um, like an external wire?

Yes.

So we could create we could use a wire.

We could give an external path for the charge to flow from the negative to the positive side.

And along the way, we can add like a light or a fa so that the charge actually does work.

I tell you what, let's move all this out of the way and then let's take a look at a circuit.

OK, so now that I've dried off from a water wheel and now we're in front of a circuit.

Tell me, have you ever seen anything like this?

No, I have never seen anything like this.

That's OK. Lots of people have never seen this.

But tell me what you recognize and then the things you don't recognize, what you think they might be for.

OK, um, I recognize the battery from earlier.

Yes, I see that there's a mini light bulb here.

And these wires are connected to the negative and positive sides of the battery, and they match up with the negative and positive symbols.

These measures something and I have no clue what this is perfect.

You did a really nice job walking through that.

So this is a circuit.

It's a way that the electrons, the.

Negative electrons can flow from the negative side of the battery all the way through back to the positive.

And along the way they hopefully will light bulb.

So these wires make those connections.

We've also got these two devices.

And you said they measure things.

And you're absolutely right.

This is an amateur.

And the amateur actually measures current.

And remember, current was the flow.

We talked about the flow of the water spout, but it's actually the flow in this case of the electrons through the circuit.

Oh, OK. And then we didn't talk about volt meters, about volts, but we talked about the pressure of the water in the water tank, how it pushes on the water down below.

The battery actually provides pressure.

It pushes the electrical charge along the circuit.

And the strength of that pushing is measured in volts and the volt meter measures that.

So what we're going to be able to do, I hope, is we've got a circuit that should light bulb and we should be able to measure both the current and the pushing power of the volts.

Now, this piece that you said you had never seen before at home.

How do you control when the lights are on or off by the light switch?

That's right.

By the light switch, or maybe if it's a lamp, you turn the little switch.

This does the same sort of thing.

This is called a knife blade switch.

And it controls if the circuit is connected and the electricity can flow or if the circuit is broken and there's no electricity, because you want a way to be able to turn this on and off.

Right now, it's off.

There's a gap here.

And so the electrical charge can't flow.

But if you were to close this, then we now have a way for the circuit to be complete and the electricity can flow.

OK, you ready to give it a shot?

Yes.

Let's go.

That's it.

Yeah, that's it.

It's not much, is it?

No, I mean, it's just a tiny little, little bit of light here.

Now, tell me, do we know that we've got current and voltage?

Yes, we do.

And how can you tell that?

Because I see that the light is on a little bit.

OK, and how else could you tell from looking at our from looking at our meters?

I see that this one went from zero to one.

Yes.

And this one went from zero to one hundred and eighty.

Yeah So we had about one hundred and eighty million amps of current.

And we've got about a volt of pushing power.

But that's clearly not enough to give us what we the power that we actually need to light bulb.

So what could we do to make that bulb brighter and maybe add more batteries?

Let's give that a shot.

Go ahead and open the circuit back and then unclip those from the battery and then clip them here in here.

So what Nilay is setting up is she's setting up two batteries in series.

And these series, the Volt Power of one and the Volt power of the other battery work together.

They're they're additive.

So let's go ahead and throw the switch.

There it is, much better.

And we've got much more volts.

And we have more current and voltage times.

Current gives us power.

Now, if we walked away from this, what do you think we'd see?

Let's see if we come back in 30 minutes.

What would we find?

I think the light would be just slightly dimmer.

And at that point.

We would have run out of the charge of our battery.

And so these batteries, we have to throw them away once you've used the charge.

But there are other batteries that you can recharge.

You plug them into the wall and they will rebuild the charge, just like the battery in your computer.

So when your computer runs out of power, plug it back in and it'll build that back up.

Hmm.

Now I know, you know.

When I was in seventh grade, I went to take your kid to work day with my dad.

And at the time he worked at Lockheed Martin in Orlando.

And so just looking at all these planes and then we had a ceremony for like the kids, and they asked us a whole bunch of questions and there were a bunch of math related questions.

And surprisingly, I got all of them right.

And I started thinking, well, maybe this is something that I want to do.

And so in high school, I was kind of, you know, debating.

I don't want to go into like a hard science or engineering.

And I just kind of looked at all the science classes that I took.

And I really, really loved physics.

And so I was like, well, what can I combine physics and math with that I can major in?

I didn't want to just major in physics.

And electrical engineering is really a bunch of physics.

And so that's kind of how I got started into engineering.

And I've been there ever since.

In my current role, I am a protection and controls test engineer.

I've used a wide range of engineering principles throughout all of the jobs that I've had in my career as a distribution engineer.

It's more so the electrical principals in in my current role, I use pretty much everything from having to connect to a relay, see what the relay is seeing and making sure that it's supposed to be seeing checking logic diagrams using current principle.

So almost everything I learned in school, I use in my current role.

I would say just explore your options.

Don't be afraid.

You don't know what you don't know.

So don't be afraid to ask questions.

Don't be afraid to explore.

There's a lot of different fields out there.

There's so much to do within STEM even within engineering.

So really just forming the groundwork now, you know, building those skills and your hard science, your hard math, things of that nature will really help you.

And then, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, any grades, start forming connections, find people outside of your school, get with your guidance counselor, see if they know people in the industry and see if you could shadow them or just learn what they do.

So that way, you have a better idea when you're going into college.

Is this what I really want to do?

Hi, I'm Raina, and I would like to know what causes the Northern Lights That's a great question.

The Aurora Borealis, also known as Northern Lights, have been fascinated people for thousands of years.

The northern lights up here in high altitude regions.

But what causes this light phenomenon?

The bright dancing lights of a are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere.

The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and the southern hemispheres.

They're known as Aurora Borealis in a north and Aurora Australis in the south.

The northern lights are beautiful and mysterious force of nature.

Hi, I'm Sophia.

And my friend Timothy and I are here at Flight Works, Alabama.

So, Tim, why do we have a remote control and a bunch of batteries just sitting on the table?

Sophia, the battery went dead while I was watching the greatest show in the world.

I'm so sorry.

That's really frustrating.

I know.

So I have these batteries here because I randomly grabbed them out the drawer so that we can test some of those to see which one is actually going to work, because I need this working.

Yeah, you need to resume your show as soon as possible.

So what we have here today, I brought my micro bit.

We're going to use our micro bits in order to check the voltage of our batteries.

What is voltage?

So voltage is what carries the electricity through a cell OK, and this is a cell.

Yes, this is a battery cell.

All right.

So what I have here, I have the actual program that we're going to be using and we're going to download it to the Microbit So I put in some things, some things in place.

For one, when we press a.

It's going to give us a reading I starting reading.

And when I press B, it's going to take that reading and it's going to convert it into voltages.

And then we can compare the voltage from battery a and battery B to see which one has a better voltage and will probably help us with this remote control working.

All right.

So we have two buttons here.

You're going to download a program onto the Microbit And then after you press the buttons, it'll say the voltage of the batteries.

Correct.

All right.

Sounds like a plan.

All right.

So let's get started.

Go ahead and download our program.

OK, it's starting to flash on here, too.

All right, so it sounds like it looks like we're ready.

Yeah.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

All right.

So go ahead and plug those things up.

OK.

Which side goes on which.

So our positive is going to go on the positive side.

And then the negative is going to be connected on the negative side.

And we're going to use these claps.

And these clots are called alligator clamps made because it looks like it's actually chopping someone up.

It does look like an alligator.

This is hard.

Do you need help?

I think I do.

All right.

So let's go ahead.

I'll help you hook this up.

OK, pop right off.

It's an alligator snapping.

Right.

And I'm trying to keep my hands away from its mouth.

Seems like you don't get very hungry.

Yeah, it's a very, very, very hungry alligator.

So we have one that clip, this on the other side.

So you've got the positive side, the negative side with the alligator clams.

All right.

So which button should I press first?

Let's press a OK, I'll read out the number one.

OK. Now we're going to be OK. One, two, nine, four.

All right, so we're going to keep that number locked in in our heads and we're going to test this second battery and we're going to see if we get a number either higher or lower.

OK.

Starting with this side.

Whoop.

OK. All right, Sophie.

I think I might need your help with this one, too, or maybe not.

I got it.

Yeah.

Let's.

All right.

So you're ready?

We're going to do the same thing.

a says one.

And then B says.

Eight hundred and fifty.

So what do that say about those two batteries, if we were comparing them?

That this one has more volts or more energy.

Right.

So this one might be a great choice in order to try and inside this a remote control.

So let's see, because I'm ready to get back to my show.

Me, too.

All right.

Well, I am the project lead for energy storage, which means that I work on giant batteries.

So we do a lot of testing.

We evaluate how well the batteries perform under different conditions.

We have a second use electric vehicle battery system which means once the batteries are done being used in a car, they get reused for energy storage.

So we look at how batteries can be used to separate the means of generation of energy from its use.

So being able to implement energy storage means that you can generate power at one point, like from a solar installation and use it later on, maybe when the sun is shining anymore And so it separates those two pieces of the electrical grid and it enables a lot more flexibility and resiliency in the system.

I've always been very interested in science and math kind of all the way through.

I had a very inspiring eighth grade science teacher that always encouraged me to kind of go into science and thought that that would be a good fit for me And then when I was looking at colleges, I toured NC State, and the department had at the time I was looking at environmental science programs and engineering programs.

And he was like, well, if you're an engineer, you get to learn how to solve the world's hardest problems.

And then now I'm here.

at Southern research.

And that's literally our motto.

I think it's just learning about so many different new topics.

We get to learn about things that nobody knows the answer to So doing research means that you're asking and answering questions that nobody's ever solved before.

So with energy storage, we're learning about how to better use it, how to make it economical, and how to use it to make the world a better place.

So for somebody that's interested in science and engineering, I would say stay curious that sometimes things aren't going to turn out and experiments aren't going to turn out the way you expected, but you're going to learn the whole throughout the whole process and that there's always kind of new ways to think about things in new areas to explore.

I think that's kind of the coolest thing about research, i your work is never going to be done and there's always going to be new, new things to figure out.

Did you know that the first electric vehicle was created more than a hundred and eighty years ago?

In the years since then, electric vehicles are really mostly a rare kind of curiosity.

Most vehicles on the road are driven by a gasoline powered combustion engine.

But over the last 20 years, the technology around electric vehicles has really advanced, and the cost to build and maintain an electric vehicl has dropped considerably.

So now you're seeing more electric vehicles on the road.

Electric vehicles work by plugging into an outlet and pulling electricity from the power grid.

That electricity is then stored in a set of rechargeable battery packs, which are usually found in the floor of the car.

Each of those battery packs contains hundreds or even thousands of individual battery cells.

Collectively, these cells store the energy until it's needed to run an electric motor And that electric motor is then used to allow the car to drive down the road.

Now, electric vehicles can plug into a multitude of different kinds of outlets and charging stations, and each one has a different combination of powe and the speed at which it charges.

For example, you can charge an electric vehicle by plugging it into a 110 outlet in the wall of your house or apartment.

This is the same kind of outlet that charges your laptop or that runs your toaster or your television.

An hour of charging from this outlet gets you about two to three miles of driving range, which may not sound like much, but if you charge it overnight, you may have all the power that you need to do your drivin to run your errands the next day if you need more power.

You can use an adapter and plug into a 220 outlet.

That's the kind of outlet that powers large appliances like an electric clothes dryer.

An hour with this kind of outlet gives you 30 to 40 miles of range, significantly more and more and more.

You're now seeing charging stations that are put outside of grocery stores and shopping centers and restaurants and companies in the parking lot of companies like this one here at Hudson Alpha.

This charging station, an hour of charging, provides about 20 to 30 miles of range.

So.

You can come in to work or you can come in to shop.

You can plug it in and top off your battery.

There are even superchargers.

These will provide more than 100 miles of driving range in less than an hour.

And there are apps that electric car drivers can use that tell them what charging stations are nearby, which is especially useful if you're thinking about taking a long road trip.

The amount of distance that a car can travel on a full charge depends on the type of car and the type and size of battery.

So as you might imagine, smaller, lighter weight cars require less power to go longer distances.

Heavier cars take more power.

More battery gives you more power, but a larger battery weighs more and contributes to the overall weight of the car.

So it's a balancing point.

Most people charge their electric vehicles from home, and the cost of that charge is just added to your monthly power bill.

And for some people, that's 30 or 40 or 50 dollars a month, depending on driving public charging stations.

Some of them are free, but many of them have a cost associated with them.

And generally, the faster the charge, the higher the cost Now, some of these you actually can pay with a credit card.

Others, you actually pay with an app on your phone.

Some of them are pay as you go, and some require monthly subscriptions.

In some cases, in some of the cars you actually can pay using an app that is built into the dashboard of your electric vehicle, which I think is just really cool.

It's a whole new concept of pulling up and saying, fill her up and plug it in.

Thanks for watching.

Alabama's STEM Explorers.

If you missed anything or you want to watch something again, you can check out our website, Alabama STEM Explorers dot org.

Maybe you have a question we could answer here on the show and you might grab a cool T-shirt.

Feel free to send us a video question or an e-mail on our Web site.

Alabama STEM Explorers dot org.

Thanks again for watching.

We'll be back next week.

Alabama's STEM explores is made possible by the generous support of the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, translating the power of genomics into real world results.

Southern Research Solving the world's hardest problems.

The Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holley and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holley, champions of servant leadership Alabama works a network of interconnected providers.

Connecting business and industry needs to a highly skilled and trained workforce.

Alabama STEM Council dedicated to improving STEM education, career awareness and workforce development across Alabama.

Alabama Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering, Coalition for Education, advocating for exceptional STEM education in Alabama.

Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative, the Alabama Department of Education's initiative to improve math and science teaching statewide.