Emma Dyer, left, demonstrates light bulb usage to a twelfth grade peer during an interactive lab she created.
Students in Michael Park’s Advanced Placement Language Arts class at Westerville Central High School recently completed a Rhetorical Activism Project. One of his pupils, Emma Dyer, chose to work with LED retrofitting for issues of sustainability, and she was able to procure from GE approximately 200 LED bulbs she used to conduct a workshop that she and her father, Mac Dyer, hosted on March 27 in the school library.
“Going through the day without electrical lighting is impossible in most of the world, but this luxury and necessity has a cost,” Dyer explained. “Thankfully, companies such as GE Lighting work continuously to create lower cost products and evolve the efficiency of lighting in turn protecting our planet for future generations. This lab put into perspective how important their work is and revealed the tangible improvements they have made in lighting.”
The first 200 fellow students who attended her talk during their lunch break or study hall not only received a LED light bulb, but they learned about the environmental impact of lighting through an interactive lab. Each station was equipped with four light bulbs, a light station and a multimeter. Bulbs were tested by screwing them into sockets, turning them on, and using a multimeter to record the volts put off by each bulb. The multimeter’s cables were then placed into a power cord and amps and volts were recorded. All bulbs were 60-watt equivalents. Participants were then asked to answer four energy-related problems.
Dyer first became interested in energy through her work at Genoa Middle School with the Ohio Energy Project. GE plans to include her activism in a future campaign.