Dec 21, 2017 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 3 min read

How’s this for innovation: Take an old bike. Take it apart, then put it back together.

As a wind turbine.

Students in the Innovators Club at Bethel Park’s Independence Middle School have embarked on a project using parts from a bicycle to build a device to generate electricity.

“It seems very possible, from what everyone has to say about this project and with all the parts we have to work with to create the turbines,” seventh-grader Brock Kitterman said. “So it should not be impossible.”

Fellow students attending a club meeting shortly before winter recess had similar optimism as David Muench, the school’s principal, and head custodian Bill Ranegar provided guidance during the early stages of the project.

“This is really an open-ended item,” Muench said. “There’s no plan. We’re taking this bike apart, and we’re figuring out how it’s going to work as we’re taking it apart. It’s just them and the bike.”

Club members – the after-school Thursday sessions are open to anyone who’s interested – started the project by working together in small groups to develop conceptual plans for how a wind turbine could look and function.

When it is finished, the device will power a hydroponic growing system that on which students in teacher Terry Spitznogle’s technology education classes are working, along with a composting system to be built on school property.

The first project of the Innovators Club, which started last year, was to build a powered go-cart.

“There’s a gas pedal and a brake and a kill switch. It goes pretty fast,” seventh-grader D.J. Meyers said, after being one of the students who had an opportunity to take the vehicle for a ride in the parking lot.

The go-cart came together from scratch.

“And when we say, ‘from scratch,’ there were no plans,” Muench explained. “The kids designed it and everything on it, and we had a great time with it.”

The Innovators Club has its origins in a grant written by school librarian Patricia Heasley that resulted in a $20,000 award from the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s Center for Creativity and the Grable Foundation.

The objective is to enhance students’ STEAM education – Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics – while teaching them the “four C’s of 21st-century learning,” as identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

“They have to be creative,” Muench said. “They have to think through a problem and be creative about how they’re going to solve it. They have to collaborate with each other on how it’s going to get solved. They have to be critical thinkers, and they have to be good communicators, to communicate their vision of what they want that to be.

“These kids are very good at that.”

Eighth-grader Toyosi Egbebi, in her second year as a club member, appreciates the opportunity to pursue her burgeoning interest in all things science, and the bicycle-to-wind-turbine project is right up her alley.

“I was really excited, because I like destroying things,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s good, but I like taking things apart and breaking things to see what’s inside.”