north metro

“I’d been telling my brother that it would be nice to charge your phone while riding a bike, and you could do this with this electrical system we’ve created,” said Nick Lindberg, who worked on the project with Zins, Ian Hamliton, Jonathan Nguyen and Christian Vasquez. (All hope to attend the University of Minnesota this fall.)

The students know that a generator light that costs nearly $200 to create might not be practical. The magnetic holding brackets, which the students designed on computers, had to be specially made. But costs could be drastically reduced once a mold was made, they said.

“It works,” said Nguyen. “That was the most important thing.”

Bethany Bartko, who will study either engineering at the University of Minnesota or nursing at Winona State next fall, was a member of a team that designed the thermally cooled space suit. She said the team got the idea after talking to their science teacher, John Bayer. As a member of the National Guard, Bayer, a bioengineer, wears a suit that becomes “super hot,” said Bartko.

“We took a cooling unit out of the fridge,” she said, crediting teammate Jacob Arntzen with the idea. “You can pack it on your back and it can cool down or heat up. “It needs tweaking, but we think it will work.”

 

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419