Cool little science fair project
Thursday, March 30th, 2006
Joe Menchefski, vice-president of sales at Advanced Glazings Ltd., sent me some photos of a neat little science project put together by Nathan Van Heyst and Tobi Sogbesan, who I’m presuming are elementary school students somewhere in Ontario. The two boys created two small greenhouses — one built with regular glass and the other using Advanced Glazings’ honey-combed, insulating glass, which evenly lets light shine through but without the sharp slivers that cause glare. Anyway, they let the two greenhouses sit in the sunlight under the same conditions for several days and watched to see if there was a difference in the growth rates of the seedlings (onions, lettuce and radishes). And sure enough, there was a noticeable difference, as you can see by the photos alongside this post. The insulating glass clearly encouraged faster growth.
These two kids deserve a pat on the back for being so creative. They placed 5th at their school’s science fair out of 30 projects and now go on to the regional fair. Menchefski told me these boys were inspired by a piece I wrote on Advanced Glazings in the Toronto Star back in December. I love hearing feedback like that.
Not only is this a great science fair project, but in demonstrates how the technology can improve the business case for a greenhouse in the real world — you get energy efficiency through better insulating and you get better quality light, which helps boost plant yields.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
