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Ben Harris Shows off the Electric Vehicle Challenge Simulator (Video)
EVChallenge is a high school student project that converts gas cars to electric. This isn't a "someday" thing. It's already happening, and Ben has worked hard to make it so in N. Carolina. There are other people around the world doing EVChallenge, and Ben does a number of things besides EVChallenge. His Kickstarter project, for instance, was called Help Bring Back Quality Science Kits (STEM Education). It closed on October 17 after 119 backers came through with $6523, which was a lot more than Ben's modest $3500 goal. This takes us to Ben's EVChallenge simulator itself, which is a simple "breadboard" simulation of the circuitry that drives an electric car so students can learn EV (electric vehicle) principles before they work on the real thing.
This is all part of the Harris Educational effort to make science teaching fun and interesting, not just with electric cars and simulations of their circuitry, but with other kits and even training services. As Ben's Training Services page says, "Harris Educational can provide face-to-face or online training for individuals, small groups, or companies. We can also help you design and implement your own training programs." So besides the video interview here, please look at Ben's pages, this article about his work, and check some of the videos on his assorted pages. It's good stuff, especially if you have (or plan to have) kids in high school. (Alternate Video Link)
This is all part of the Harris Educational effort to make science teaching fun and interesting, not just with electric cars and simulations of their circuitry, but with other kits and even training services. As Ben's Training Services page says, "Harris Educational can provide face-to-face or online training for individuals, small groups, or companies. We can also help you design and implement your own training programs." So besides the video interview here, please look at Ben's pages, this article about his work, and check some of the videos on his assorted pages. It's good stuff, especially if you have (or plan to have) kids in high school. (Alternate Video Link)
Does it work on any type of cars? Would it work on my rust bucket on wheels ?
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I've seen amateur battery conversions on a couple vehicles. The results look like deathtraps to me. Filling some compartment with inappropriate batteries (the type always determined exclusively by cost) that behave in unanalyzed ways in a collision is a recipe for horrible failure.
Sorry. That's what I see. This is cool for education and demonstration purposes, but amateur conversions are not roadworthy and no one should be misled about that.
But they will be. Because if it's "green" and "for the environment" you can crucify puppies and nobody will blink.
...it's a fuck-no thing. I've seen the "conversions" people are doing. You're likely to wind up dead driving one of those things.
EVs aren't going mainstream until auto manufacturers make them both affordable and able to travel the same range as a gas vehicle in the same sentence. It's nice that there are $60k+ vehicles out there that can go the distance, but it winds up just being a novelty for people with a lot of money.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The huge progressive education push of the early 20th century has been the bane of education. The roots of making education "fun" come from John Dewey's attempt to make education "child-centric" by converting it to "experience". This has destroyed education as an institution and as a functional concept.
Education used to be about learning, about remembering, about memorizing. It was based on a broken theory: the mind is a muscle, and exercising it makes it strong. Upon learning this was, in fact, complete crap, progressive educators moved to eschew the hard labor of learning in favor of teaching through relateable experiences. They threw out actual education in the process.
The mind actually learns by association. In John Dewey's new vision, a student doesn't study meaningless biology textbooks; he grows plants from seeds, and then is able to tell us that plants grow from seeds with sunlight and water. It would be much more effective and efficient to carry out these such processes while also drilling the textbook knowledge as before: more knowledge was absorbed in the past, and these experiences give a way to more quickly and effectively grasp such knowledge.
The progressives failed to realize the brain makes such associations, and can more effectively process new information with a great wealth of old to work from: Latin and Greek provide a basis of comparison for English and European languages, rather than the raw strength of the brain's language centers. To make education fun and meaningful should have been an effort in making the raw facts being taught more meaningful, not excising them from the mind of the student and leaving them uneducated but also unperturbed by the labors of study.
I fear the same will happen here: cars will be converted by rote mechanical exercise, and students will learn little of engineering. They will believe they know about electric cars because they have bolted together some parts which they do not understand in ways which they do not comprehend. Rather than convey comprehension and understanding, we will convey a hollow sense of accomplishment and experience.
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