Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Students enjoyed Energy3D in Engineering Energy Efficiency Summer School 2011

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This week 11 students of different ages (10-17) participated in our three-day summer school for the Engineering Energy Efficiency project. They were charged with using Energy3D to design their own model houses on a computer first and then construct them using inexpensive materials.

Although Energy3D is still in its alpha phase, it seemed to work remarkably well for these students who used the Mac computers we provided (thanks to Dr. Saeid Nourian, the lead developer of the software). Despite of some glitches, the students easily designed their own computer models. Creating the roof, the hardest part using other programs such as SketchUp, has been greatly simplified in Energy3D.

Interestingly, of the five groups, none used the template houses we provided to help them get started, indicating the fact that the students actually preferred designing their very own houses from scratch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this post. I wish I would have found it a couple days earlier. My 8th grade science students just completed a project where they researched different renewable energy sources and then we had a debate where students tried to rally for their energy source. This would have been fun to incorporate.